LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



A JAPANESE BOY 



BY HIMSELF 






30* 



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NEW HAVEN, CONN. 
E. B. SHELDON & CO 

1889, 



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COPYRIGHTED, 1889, 

By SHIUKICHI SHIGEMI. 



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CONTENTS. 



PAGE 



CHAPTER I. 

MY BIRTHPLACE — MY GRANDFATHER — TENJINSAN, 7 

CHAPTER II. 
OLD-FASHIONED SCHOOL — MY SCHOOLMASTER — THE 

SCHOOL-HOUSE, 14 

CHAPTER III. 

THE KITCHEN— DINNER— FOOD, .... 19 

CHAPTER IV. 

GAMES — NEW SCHOOL — IMITATING THE WEST — MORE 
ABOUT MY SCHOOLMASTER — PUNISHMENTS AT 
SCHOOL, 25 

CHAPTER V. 

BATHS — EVENINGS AT HOME — JAPANESE DANCING 

AND MUSIC, 33 

CHAPTER VI. 

AMATEUR ACTORS AND REAL ACTORS AND AC- 
TRESSES — JAPANESE THEATRE, .... 45 

CHAPTER VII. 

WRESTLING — STORY-TELLERS— PICNIC AND PICNIC 

GROUNDS — AN OLD CASTLE AND A TRADITION, 57 
3 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

ANGLING— A PIOUS OLD LADY AND HER ADVENT- 
URES, 67 

CHAPTER IX. 

THE YAITO — A WITCH-WOMAN — AUNT OTSUN^, MISS 

CHRYSANTHEMUM AND MR. PROSPERITY, . . 75 

CHAPTER X. 

NEW-YEAR'S DAY — THE MOCHI-MAKING — OLD-TIME 

OBSERVANCES, 87 

CHAPTER XI. 

KITE-FLYING — HOW I MADE MY KITE — MY UNCLE 
AND HIS BIG KITE — OTHER NEW-YEAR GAMES 
— HOW WE END OUR NEW-YEAR HOLIDAYS, . 96 

CHAPTER XII. 

OTHER JAPANESE HOLIDAYS — TANABATA AND 
INOKO, THE BOYS' DAYS — THE SHINTOISTIC AND 
BUDDHISTIC ABLUTION MASS. .... 105 



CHAPTER XIII. 

OUR PRIEST AND BOY-PRIEST — OUR DOG GEM — 

SHAKA'S BIRTHDAY, 112 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE FESTIVALS OF LOCAL DEITIES— SCHOOL AGAIN, 
AND SOME ACCOUNT OF MY SCHOOL-FELLOWS — 
CONCLUSION, 121 



PREFATORY LETTER. 

Prof. Henry W. Farnam: 

Dear Sir:— My motives in writing this jejune 
little volume are, as you are aware, two : 

1st. There seems to be no story told in this 
country of the Japanese boy's life by a Japanese 
boy himself. The following rambling sketches are 
incoherent and extremely meagre, I own ; but you 
must remember that they are a boy's talks. Give 
him encouragement, and he will tell you more. 

2d. The most important of my reasons is my 
desire to obtain the means to prosecute the studies 
I have taken up in America. Circumstances have 
obliged me to make my own way in this hard 
world. If I knew of a better step I should not 
have resorted to an indiscreet juvenile publication 
—a publication, moreover, of my own idle expe- 
riences, and in a language the alphabet of which I 
learned but a few years ago. 



6 PBEFATORY LETTER. 

To you my sincere acknowledgments are due for 
encouraging me to write these pages. This kind- 
ness is but one of many, of which the public has 
no knowledge. 

I am, sir, 

Yours very truly, 

Shiukichi Shigemi. 

New Haven, Ct., September, 1889. 



A JAPANESE BOY. 



CHAPTER I. 



I was born in a small seaport town called 
Imabari, which is situated on the western coast 
of the island of Shikoku, the eastern of the 
two islands lying south of Hondo. The Imabari 
harbor is a miserable ditch; at low tide the 
mouth shows its shallow bottom, and one can 
wade across. People go there for clam-digging. 
Two or three little streams empty their waters 
into the harbor. A few junks and a number of 
boats are always seen standing in this pool of salt- 
water. In the houses surrounding it, mostly 
very old and ramshackle, are sold eatables and 
provisions, fishes are bought from the boats, or 
shelter is given to sailors. 

When a junk comes in laden with rice, commis- 
sion merchants get on board and strike for bar- 
gains. The capacity of the vessel is measured by 
the amount of rice it can carry. The grain mer- 
chant carries about him a good-sized bamboo a few 
inches long, one end of which is sharpened and the 
other closed, being cut just at a joint. He thrusts 
7 



8 A JAPANESE BOY. 

the pointed end into bags of the rice. The bags 
are rice-straw, knitted together roughly into the 
shape of barrels. Having taken out samples in the 
hollow inside of the bamboo stick, the merchant 
first examines critically the physical qualities of 
the grains on the palm of his hand, and then pro- 
ceeds to chew them in order to see how they taste. 
Years of practice enable him to state, after such 
simple tests, precisely what section of the country 
the article in question came from, although the 
captain of the vessel may claim to have shipped it 
from a famous rice -producing province. 

About the harbor are coolies waiting for work. 
They are strong, muscular men, thinly clad, with 
easy straw sandals on. Putting a little cushion on 
the left shoulder, a coolie rests the rice-bag upon it 
and walks away from the ship to a store-house ; 
his left hand passed around the burden and his 
right holding a short, stout, beak-like, iron hook 
fastened in the bag. In idle moments the coolies 
get together and indulge in tests of strength, lift- 
ing heavy weights, etc. 

At a short distance to the right from the 
entrance of the harbor is a sanitarium. It is a 
huge, artificial cave, built of stone and mortar and 
heated by burning wood-fires in the inside. After 
it is sufficiently warmed the fire is extinguished, 
the smoke-escape shut, and the oven is ready for 
use. Invalids flock in with wet mats, which they 
use in sitting on the scalding rocky floor of the 
oven. Lifting the mat that hangs like a curtain 
at the entrance, they plunge into the suffocating 
hot air and remain there some time and emerge 



BY HIMSELF. 9 

again into daylight, fairly roasted and smothered. 
Then they speedily make for the sea and bathe in 
it. This process of alternate heating and cooling 
is repeated several times a day. It is to cook out, 
as it were, diseases from the body. For some con- 
stitutions the first breath of the oven immediately 
after the warming is considered best, for others 
the mild warmth of later hours is thought more 
commendable. I, for myself, who have accompa- 
nied my mother and gone through the torture, do 
not like either very much. The health-seekers 
rent rooms in a few large cottages standing near 
by. In fact, they live out of town, free from busi- 
ness and domestic cares, pass time at games, or 
saunter and breathe pure air under pine-trees in 
the neighborhood. The establishment is opened 
only during summer time. A person ought to get 
well in whiling away in free air those glorious 
summer days without the aid of the roasting 
scheme. 

To the left of the harbor along the shore stands 
the main body of Imabari. Mt. Myozin heaves 
in sight long before anything of the town can be 
seen. It is not remarkable as a mountain, but be- 
ing so near my town, whenever I have espied it on 
my return I have felt at home. I can remember 
its precise outline. As we draw nearer, white- 
plastered warehouses, the sea-god's shrine jutting 
out into the water, and the castle stone walls come 
in our view. You observe no church-steeple, that 
pointed object so characteristically indicative of 
a city at a distance in the Christian community. 
To be sure, the pagoda towers toward the sky in 



10 A JAPANESE BOY. 

the community of Buddhists ; but it is more elabor- 
ate and costly a thing than the steeple, and Ima- 
bari is too poor to have one. 

Facing the town, in the sea, rises a mountainous 
island ; it encloses with the neighboring islets the 
Imabari sound. A report goes that on this island 
lies a gigantic stone, apparently immovable by 
human agency, so situated that a child can rock it 
with one hand. Also that a monster of a tortoise, 
centuries old, floats up occasionally from an 
immeasurable abyss near the island to sun itself ; 
and those who had seen it thought it was an 
island. 

Very picturesque if viewed from the sea but 
painfully poverty-stricken to the sight when near, 
is a quarter closely adjoining Imabari on the north. 
It is on the shore and entirely made up of fisher- 
men's homes. The picturesque, straw-thatched 
cottages stand under tall, knotty pine-trees and 
send up thin curls of smoke. Their occupants 
are, however, untidy, careless, ignorant, dirty; 
the squalid children let loose everywhere in ragged 
dress, bareheaded and barefooted. The men, 
naked all summer and copper-colored, go fishing 
for days at a time in their boats ; the women sell 
the fishes in the streets of Imabari. A fisher- wo- 
man carries her fishes in a large, shallow, wooden 
tub that rests on her head ; she also carries on her 
breast a babe that cannot be left at home. 

Imabari has about a dozen streets. They are 
narrow, dirty, and have no sidewalks; man and 
beast walk the same path. As no carriages and 
wagons rush by, it is perfectly safe for one to 



BY HIMSELF. H 

saunter along the streets half asleep. The first 
thing I noticed upon my landing in New York was, 
that in America a man had to look out every min- 
ute for his personal safety. From time to time I 
was collared by the captain who had charge of me 
with, "Here, boy!" and I frequently found great 
truck horses or an express wagon almost upon me. 
In crossing the streets, horse-cars surprised me 
more than once in a way I did not like, and the 
thundering engine on the Manhattan road caused 
me to crouch involuntarily. Imabari is quite a 
different place; all is peace and quiet there.* In 
one section of the town blacksmiths reside exclu- 
sively, making the street black with coal dust. In 
another granite workers predominate, rendering 
the street white with fine stone chips. On Temple 
street, you remark temples of different Buddhist 
denominations, standing side by side in good fellow- 
ship; and in Fishmongers' alley all the houses 
have fish-stalls, and are filled with the odor of 
fish. The Japanese do not keep house in one place 
and store in another; they live in their stores. 
Neither do we have that singular system of board- 
ing houses. Our people have homes of their own, 
however poor. 

My family lived on the main street, which is 
divided into four subdivisions or "blocks." The 
second block is the commercial centre, so to speak, 
of the town, and there my father kept a store. 
My grandfather, I understood, resided in another 
street before he moved with his son-in-law, my 
father, to the main street. He lived to the great 
age of eighty ; I shall always remember him with 



12 A JAPANESE BOY. 

honor and respect. Of my grandmother I know 
absolutely nothing, she having passed away before 
I was born. 

It is customary in Japan that a man too old for 
business and whose head is white with the effect 
of many weary winters, should retire and hiber- 
nate in a quiet chamber, or in a cottage called 
inkyo (hiding place), and be waited upon by his 
eldest son or son-in-law who succeeds him in busi- 
ness. My good grandfather— his kindly face and 
pleasant words come back to me this moment — 
lived* in a nice little house in the rear of my 
father's. Although strong in mind he was bent 
with age and went about with the help of a bamboo 
cane. He lived alone, had little to do, but read a 
great deal, and thought much, and when tired did 
some light manual work. It was a great pleasure 
for me to visit him often. In cold winter days 
he would be found sitting by kotatsu, a native 
heating apparatus. It is constructed on the follow- 
ing plan : a hole a foot square is cut in the centre 
of the matted floor, wherein a stone vessel is fitted, 
and a frame of wood about a foot high laid on it 
so as to protect the quilt that is to be spread over 
it, from burning. The vessel is filled with ashes, 
and a charcoal fire is burned in it. I used to take 
my position near my grandfather, with my hands 
and feet beneath the quilt, and ask him to tell 
stories. My feet were either bare or in a pair of 
socks, for before getting on the floor we leave our 
shoes in the yard. Our shoes, by the way, are 
more like the ancient Jewish sandals than the 
modern leather shoes. 



BY HIMSELF. 13 

In this little house of my grandfather's I erected 
my own private shrine of Tenjinsan, the god of 
penmanship. The Japanese and the Chinese value 
highly a skilful hand at writing ; a famous scroll - 
writer gets a large sum of money with a few 
strokes of his brush; he is looked up to like a 
celebrated painter. We school-boys occasionally 
proposed penmanship contests. On the same sheet 
of paper each of us wrote, one beside another, his 
favorite character, or did his best at one character 
we had mutually agreed upon, and took it to our 
teacher to decide upon the finest hand. The best 
specimens of a school are sometimes framed and 
hung on the walls of a public temple of Ten j in. 
He is worshiped by all school-boys, and I also fol- 
lowed the fashion. My image of him was made 
of clay ; I laid it on a shelf and offered sake (rice- 
wine) in two tiny earthen bottles, lighted a little 
lamp every night and put up prayers in childish 
zeal. The family rejoiced at my devotion; they 
finally bought me, one holiday, a miniature toy 
temple. It was painted in gay colors; I was 
delighted with it beyond expression, and my 
devotion increased tenfold. 



J4 A JAPANESE BOY. 



CHAPTER II. 

The earliest recollection I have of my school life 
is my entrance with a number of playmates into a 
private gentleman's school. At that time the com- 
mon school system which now exists in Japan had 
not been adopted ; some gentlemen of the town kept 
private schools, in which exercises consisted mainly 
of penmanship ; for arithmetic we had to go some- 
where else. In Imabari there lived a keen-eyed 
little man who was wonderfully quick at figures, 
and to him we repaired for instruction in mathe- 
matics. We worked, not with slate and pencil, but 
with a rectangular wooden frame set with beads, 
resembling an abacus. It is called soroban; you 
find it in every store in Japan. I like it better 
than slate and pencil, for the fundamental opera- 
tions of arithmetic, but cannot use it in higher 
mathematics. I remember seeing a young man of 
my acquaintance perform algebraic calculations, of 
which we had some knowledge before the influx of 
Western learning, with a number of little black 
and white blocks called the " mathematical blocks." 
A knowledge of penmanship and arithmetic is all 
that is required of a man of business, but a learned 
man is expected to read Chinese. 

My schoolmaster was a kind of priest, not of Budd- 



BY HIMSELF. 15 

hism nor of Shintoism, but one of those who go by 
the name of Yamabushi ; he let his hair grow instead 
of shaving it off as the Buddhist priest does, wore 
high clogs and the peculiar robe of his religion. He 
simply followed his father in the vocation ; he was 
a young man of high promise and manifested more 
ardor in letters than at the prayers for the sick or 
for the prosperity of the people. His house was on 
the fourth block of the main street, set back a little 
from the street and with an open yard between the 
tall, elaborate gate and the mansion. The front of 
the residence was taken up by the shrine ; the school 
was kept in the back part of the house. When we 
first entered the school we were known as the " new- 
comers" among the older boys, and though bullying 
was not altogether absent, we had no ordeal to go 
through as the Freshmen have in American col- 
leges. 

The pupil's equipment in one of these old-fash- 
ioned schools consisted of a low table, a cushion to 
squat upon, and a chest for the following articles : 
white paper, copy-books and a small box contain- 
ing a stone ink-vessel, a cake of india ink, an 
earthen water-bottle and brushes. A little water 
is poured in the hollow of the stone vessel, the 
india ink rubbed on it for a while, and when the 
water becomes sufficiently black the brush is 
dipped in it. Then looking at model characters 
written down for us in a separate book by the 
teacher, we try to trace the same on our copy- 
books, paying close attention to every particular. 
The first that we must learn is our alphabet of 
forty-eight letters. 



16 A JAPANESE BOY. 

I recall vividly the trials in making the alpha- 
betical figures. I tried time and again, but to fail ; 
the sorrow gathered thickly in my mind and soon 
the grief overpowered all my strenuous efforts not 
to weep, then the master would send one of the 
older boys to help me. He stands behind me while 
I sit, grasps my hand which holds the brush, and to 
my heart's content traces figures like the master's 
in perfection. 

The copy-book is made of the tenacious soft Jap- 
anese paper, many sheets of which are bound 
together. Each of the forty-eight characters is 
studied separately ; it is written large so that the 
learner may see where a bold stroke is required and 
where a mild touch. After the alphabet we learn 
to write Chinese characters. The copy-books be- 
come black after a while, being dried and used 
again ; therefore they need not be perfectly white 
at first ; usually they are made of the sheets of an 
old ledger. I used to see on the pages of the copy- 
books made for me by my father, old debts and 
credits, and the names of the parties concerned in 
them, dating back to grandfather's time ; they dis- 
appeared collectively under my wild dash and 
sweep of india ink. What an act of generosity to 
wipe out the remembrance of former money com- 
plications ! After a day's work all the copy-books 
are literally drenched with the black fluid; they 
are moist and heavy. They must be dried. Every 
patch of sunshine about the school is improved, 
every breezy corner turned to account. At home 
the kitchen is spread with them at night, so as to 
have them dry by the morning. Copy-books that 



BY HIMSELF. 1? 

have done long service are coated with a smooth, 
shining incrustation of carbon — shining if good ink 
has been used, but dull if ink is of cheap quality. 
The quality of an india ink cake is not only judged 
by its lustre, but also by its hardness and odor; a 
good one is hard and pleasant and the bad soft 
and unpleasant. After we have practised writing 
the letters for some time, we finally write them on 
white papers and present them to our teacher, who 
with red ink makes further necessary corrections. 
If the final copy is satisfactory, he sets us at work 
on a next portion. 

Every morning, after breakfast, I gathered to- 
gether dried copy-books and went after or waited 
for some boys to come along. We strolled up the 
street toward the schoolmaster's, calling on other 
boys as we went. The first task in school upon our 
arrival was to set the tables in order, get the things 
out of the chests and go after some water for mak- 
ing the ink. It was no comfortable occupation, cold 
winter mornings, to get the water from the well 
in the windy, open yard in the rear of the house, 
and dip our hand and the drip -bottle together and 
keep them in it until all the air escaped by bubbles, 
and the bottle was full. A bottle though I called it, 
the receptacle is a hollow, square china vessel, wit"h 
two small holes on the flat surface — one in the 
centre and the other in one of the corners. 

We sit in a house where there is practically no ar- 
rangement for heating and where we are poorly pro- 
tected from the gusts from without. The Japanese 
house is built opening widely into the external air ; 
it has but a few segments of external walls around 
2 



18 A JAPANESE BOY. 

it ; therefore one can select no breezier abode dur- 
ing the warm months, but in the dead of win er — 
the mere thought of it makes me shiver. Those 
immense open spaces could be closed, to be sure, at 
night with solid pine-board sliding doors ; but in 
the daytime the question of light comes in. To 
meet this difficulty our ingenious forefathers had 
contrived a frame-work of wood pasted with paper. 
You must know they had no idea of glass. We 
can scarcely call it a happy solution of the prob- 
blem, for the paper is soon punched through and 
lets in the biting wind. Too much active ventila- 
tion takes place, whistling through the holes ; and 
then when a storm strikes us, the whole frail work 
shakes in the grooves wherein its two ends are 
fitted, like the chattering of the teeth. This sliding 
paper partition is called shoji, and of late has been 
somewhat replaced by the more expensive glass 
windows. Since the introduction of glass I have 
seen the shoji partly covered with it and partly 
with paper, the Japanese thinking it very conven- 
ient to see through the partition without being at 
the pains of pushing it aside or making a hole in 
the paper. Had paper been entirely discarded and 
glass alone been jused the Japanese house would be 
much brighter and warmer. 

Such a building is a poor place to hold a school in, 
but the boys were used to it and they behaved so- 
quarreling, weeping, laughing, shrieking — that 
there was little time left for them to feel the cold 
in their young warm blood. 



BY HIMSELF. 19 



CHAPTER III. 

When just from school our faces and hands were 
as black as demons' with ink. On my reaching 
home my mother would take care of the copy- 
books, and send me straight to the kitchen to wash 
before I sat down to the table. The vessel corres- 
ponding to the basin is made of brass. We have 
not learned to use soap ; old folks believe that it 
would turn our black hair red like that of the for- 
eigners. There is no convenience of faucet or 
pump; each house has its own well in the back 
yard, even in the city; — hence no water- works, 
no gas-works, and no fuss about plumbing; the 
housewife must proceed to the well for water, rain 
or shine, and struggle back to the kitchen with a 
pailful of it every time she needs it. 

The kitchen itself is not often floored ; the range 
(of clay and of different appearance from that 
which is used here) and the sink stand directly on 
mother earth under a shed-like roof which has been 
darkened by smoke. The range has no chimney ; 
not coal but wood is burned in it, and all the 
smoke escapes from the front opening or mouth 
and fills the entire kitchen, causing the dear black 
eyes of the amiable housewife to suffuse with tears. 

She has the small Japanese towel wrapped round 



20 A JAPANESE BOY. 

her head to protect the elaborate coiffure from the 
soot of years, that has accumulated everywhere 
and falls in gentle flakes, snow-fashion, on things 
universally. She works her pair of lungs at the 
"fire-blowing tube," a large bamboo two or three 
feet long, opened at one end for a mouth-piece and 
punched at the other for a narrow orifice. The im- 
prisoned volumes of smoke in the kitchen must 
crowd out through a square aperture in the roof ; if 
it be closed on a rainy day, they must escape 
through windows or crevices the best they may. 

The water when brought in from the well is 
emptied into a deep heavy earthen reservoir of 
reddish hue standing near the sink. With a 
wooden ladle I would dip out the water into the 
brass basin (sheet brass, not solid), and wash my- 
self without soap in the most rapid manner pos- 
sible, yearning eagerly for dinner. The towel is a 
piece of cotton dyed blue with designs left undyed 
or dyed black. I grumbled, I confess, when my 
mother sent me back for a more thorough washing ; 
but with the utmost alacrity I always saluted the 
very sight of viands. 

Oftentimes I was late and was obliged to eat a 
late dinner alone • but when all of our family sat 
down together, enough of life was manifested. At 
one end my witty young brother provoked laughter 
in us with stuff and nonsense; next him sat my 
younger sister, quiet and good. I assumed my 
position between my sister and my father and 
mother, who sat together at the head of the row. 
I forget to mention that my elder brother, whose 
place must be next above me, had been ordered to 



BY HIMSELF. 21 

keep peace in the region of my merry little brother. 
My sister-in-law or my elder brother's wife took 
her stand opposite us, surrounded by a rice-bucket, 
a cast-iron cooking-pot, a teapot, a basket of rice- 
bowls, saucers, etc. She it was who had to cook 
and serve dinner and wash dishes and take care of 
her babies. It is this that renders a'young married 
woman's lot in life very hard in Japan, the princi- 
cipal weight of daily work devolving upon her. 
After all this, if parents-in-law are not pleased 
with her she is in imminent danger of being turned 
off like a hired servant, however affectionate she 
may be toward her husband ; and the husband feels 
it his duty to part with her despite his deep attach- 
ment ; so sacred is regarded the manifestation of 
filial piety ! Fortunately for my sister-in-law, my 
mother, who has four daughters living with their 
husbands' relatives, made every household task 
as light and easy as she could for her and ex- 
pressed sympathy when needed, knowing that her 
own daughters were laboring in the like circum- 
stances. 

We do not eat at one large dining table with 
chairs round it ; we sit on our heels on the matted 
floor with a separate small table in front of each of 
us. I remember my table was in the form of a box 
about a foot square, the lid of which I lifted and 
laid on the body of the box with the inner surface 
up. The inner surface was japanned red, the outer 
surface and the sides of the box green. The con- 
venience of this form of table is, that you can store 
away your own rice-bowl, vegetable-dish and chop- 
stick case in the box. Some tables stand on two 



"22 A JAPANESE BOY. 

flat and broad legs, others have drawers in their 
sides. We do not ring the bell in announcing 
dinner; in large families they clap two oblong 
blocks of hard wood. Grace before meat was a 
thing unknown to us ; my brother, however, had a 
queer habit of bowing to his chopsticks at the 
close of meals. He did it from simple heartfelt 
gratitude and not for show. In his ignorance of 
Him who provideth our daily bread, he concluded 
to return thanks to the tools of immediate useful- 
ness. Chopsticks are of various materials— bam- 
boo, mahogany, ivory, etc., — and in different 
shapes — round, angular, slender at one end and 
stout at the other, etc. In a great public feast 
where there is no knowing the number present, or 
a religious fete where reverential cleanliness is 
formally insisted upon, fork-shaped splints of soft 
wood are distributed among the guests who rend 
them asunder into pairs of impromptu chopsticks. 
On the morning of New Year's Day tradition 
requires us to use chopsticks prepared hastily of 
mulberry twigs in handling rice-paste cakes caller 1 
mochi, which the people cook with various edibles 
and eat, as a sort of religious ceremony. 

Rice is the staple food. Vegetables and fishes 
are also consumed, yet no meat is eaten. Par- 
tridge and game, however, were sanctioned from 
early times as food or rather as luxuries. To cook 
rice just right — not too soft nor too hard — is not an 
easy matter ; it is considered an art every Japanese 
maiden of marriageable age must needs acquire. 
The rice is first washed in a wooden tub, and then 
transferred to a deep iron cooking-pot with some 



BY HIMSELF. 23 

water. The point lies in the question, how much 
water is needed? Neither too much nor too little; 
there is a golden mean. If the rice be cooked 
either the very least little bit soft or hard the 
young servant-wife, for really that she is, is blamed 
for it. The right amount of water is only ascer- 
tained by trial. No less puzzling is the degree of 
heat to be applied to the pot, and the point at which 
to withdraw the fuel and leave the cooking to be 
completed without any further application of heat. 
These things I speak of not merely from observation 
but from personal experience. When I was off at 
a boarding school, which I may have occasion to 
speak of, I experimented in boarding myself for 
a while ; I learned there how to cook as at a young 
ladies' seminary, as well as how to write and read. 
Hot boiled rice we always have at dinner; at 
supper and breakfast we pour boiling tea over cold 
rice in the bowl and are content. Tea is boiling in 
the kitchen from morning till night. It is drunk 
with no sugar or milk; indeed, the scrupulous 
inhabitants of the "land of the gods" never 
dreamt of tasting the milk of a brute. If a babe 
is nourished with cow's milk, it is believed that 
the horns will grow on his forehead. When no 
palatable dishes are to be had we eat our rice with 
pickled plums and preserved radishes, turnips, 
egg-plants and cabbage. The preserves are not 
done up in glass jars ; they are kept in a huge tub 
of salt and rice-bran. During the summer months 
when vegetables are plenty and cheap we buy a 
great quantity of them from a farmer of our 
acquaintance. He brings them on the back of a 



24 A JAPANESE BOY, 

horse. The poor animal is usually loaded so 
heavily that only his head and tail are visible 
amidst the mountain of cabbage leaves. Days are 
spent in washing and scrubbing the roots and bulbs 
of the garden, many more in drying them in the 
sun. House-tops, weather-beaten walls, fences and 
all available windy corners are utilized in hang- 
ing up the vegetables. When partly dried they 
are packed in salt and rice-bran and subjected to 
pressure in bamboo-hooped wooden tubs, com- 
monly by laying old millstones on them. Being 
but partially dry, the vegetables deliver the 
remaining moisture to the powder in which they 
are packed, and in course of time the whole con- 
tents become soaked in a yellowish, muddy, pun- 
gent liquid. Koko, as the vegetables are then 
called, can be preserved in this way throughout the 
whole year. They are taken out from time to time, 
washed and sliced and relished with great satisfac- 
tion. They are something that is sure to be 
obtained in any house at any time ; with cold rice 
and hot tea they make up our simplest fare. 

When I was late from school I made out my 
dinner with the rice and koko. Frequently, how- 
ever, my provident mother set aside for me some- 
thing nice. 



BY HIMSELF. 25 



CHAPTER IV. 

I believe we had no afternoon session in the old- 
fashioned school ; and the boys had two or three 
pet games to play in leisure hours. One of them 
was played in this manner : each one is provided 
with a number of pointed iron sticks a few inches 
long. The leader pitches one of his sticks in soft 
soil ; the second follows suit, aiming to root out his 
predecessor's by the force of pitching in his own 
close to it; then the third, the fourth, and all 
around the company. Another of the games was 
played with square chips of wood, on which were 
painted heads of men, demons and all sorts of 
fanciful figures. A triangle was drawn on hard 
level ground and at a distance from its base a 
parallel line; from which line the boys each in 
turn threw a common lot of the chips, contributed 
by all, into the inside of the triangle. It must be 
done with the same nicety of aim and attitude as 
in throwing quoits. A habit established itself 
among us of the players coming down to the 
ground on all fours immediately after the act of 
throwing ; it was the consequence of bending too far 
forward in order to get in all the chips at the peril 
of neglecting the centre of gravity. The chips that 
flew outside of the triangle were gathered by the 



26 A JAPANESE BOY. 

next player and those in the inside allowed to be 
taken by the player, should he be able to throw a 
chip from his hand and lay it on them one by one. 
If he failed at any moment, the next player gath- 
ered together all the remaining chips and played 
his turn. A modification of this game consists in 
throwing the chips against a wall, and counting 
good those only that remain inside a straight 
line parallel with the foot of the wall, and turning 
over to the next player those on the outside. The 
game is played by girls as well as by boys, 
although they rarely play together. 

We also used to play hide-and-seek, blind-man's- 
buff and other games that are familiar in this 
country. 

Later in my school days the government under- 
went great changes, and it adopted the common 
school system of the West. My father was to pay 
a school-tax and I to attend a new school, where 
instruction was not in penmanship alone but ex- 
tended over various subjects. Text-books on 
arithmetic, Japanese geography and history had 
been compiled after the American pattern, but no 
grammar appeared; the educational department 
left the language to be taught by the purely induc- 
tive method. The fact is that the Japanese lan- 
guage has not been systematized; should one 
attempt it he would find it a tremendous task. 

When I was on the point of leaving for America 
my brother put into my hand a Japanese gram- 
mar in two thin volumes, written by a literary man 
in Tokio, and said that it was being used in 
schools. I have them still by me and privately 



BY HIMSELF. 2t 

consider the attempt not a very great success. 
The gentleman tries to follow the steps of the 
European grammarian; he cleverly makes out 
"noun " and "pronoun," " verb " and " adverb " — 
even "article,' 1 (which, in good faith, I never in 
the slightest suspected our language was guilty of 
possessing) from the chaos. Upon the whole, the 
book has the effect of confusing instead of enlight- 
ening me; after my dabbling in languages, in 
Japanese I prefer to be taught like a babe. 

Japanese dictionaries are for the purpose of 
hunting up Japanese meanings of Chinese letters, 
answering to your Latin and Greek lexicons. So 
much of Chinese has been introduced into our lan- 
guage in the course of centuries, that it is now im- 
possible to read one line in a Japanese newspaper, 
for instance, without coming across Chinese char- 
acters. In books for women and children and in 
popular novels Japanese equivalents are written 
beside Chinese words. In getting lessons we made 
little use of the dictionaries ; once learned by dicta- 
tion from the teacher we relied on our memory 
and that of others; hence frequent review was 
needed to retain them. As the new school 
system took root, the school books began to have 
'vocabularies and keys; and the Chinese classics 
pursued by advanced students their " pony." 

Just at present a movement is on foot to sim- 
plify our tongue in its complication with Chinese. 
People generally suppose the two languages are 
alike; many of them have asked me if I could in- 
terpret to them what the down-town ' ' washees " 
were so merrily babbling about over their flat- 



2$ A JAPANESE BOY. 

irons. It is a mistake ; Japanese and Chinese are 
totally different, strange as it may appear. And 
yet I had to learn my Chinese in order to read our 
standard works. If the common people could un- 
derstand Chinese as well as the learned persons, I 
believe we could get along very well with our 
language as it is; but they do not. It would be 
very inconvenient indeed if, for instance, in this 
country the "educated" people should use long 
words all the while, or employ French expressions 
freely in talking and writing. Just such a pedan- 
try exists in my native country, and truly educa- 
ted men are crying out for reformation. There 
are two parties. One party thinks it can do it by 
using unadulterated Japanese, while the other 
deems nothing short of the Romanization of the 
whole fabric — that is, the adoption of the Roman 
alphabet in spelling Japanese words — could accom- 
plish the end. Opinion is equally divided between 
them; the second party may appear slightly 
stronger on account of its members for the greater 
part being students of other languages beside their 
own. Both these parties issue periodicals to advo- 
cate their theories and at the same time to carry 
their ideas into practice. These are worthy 
efforts ; as yet they are experiments. We are told 
that the growth of a language is a matter of gener- 
ations, that language has life like everything else, 
and that it must undergo changes despite feeble 
human efforts. 

But to return. Happily our former schoolmas- 
ter was hired by the new organization and still 
took charge of us. He was a gifted young gentle- 



BY HIMSELF. 29 

man, a writer of lucid sentences and also some- 
thing of a poet. He encouraged us greatly in 
polishing our Japanese-Chinese composition. It 
was his custom to select the best composition 
from the class, on a given subject, copy it on the 
blackboard and point out before the class what 
elegant epithets could be substituted for vulgar 
ones. It was a pleasure with him to do this, 
whereas in mathematics he did not show much 
zeal. Above all, he inherited from his father the 
art of fine penmanship. His brother, too, had a 
well-formed hand quite like our teacher's; evi- 
dently it was a case of hereditary genius. 

At times our beloved master voluntarily offered 
to recite to us records of famous battles and heroes 
that adorn the pages of Japanese history. He did 
this from the love of telling them ; the boys were 
as fond of hearing as he was of telling. He had in 
hand no book to help him ; the gallant exploits of 
the brave and handsome, the rescuing of the 
virtuous fair, the crash, dash and rush of horses, 
lances and swords he called up from memory and 
decked with his teeming imagination. On such an 
occasion his language was prolific, his voice modu- 
lated according to the shifting shades of the sub- 
ject matter; in short, his whole man, heart and 
soul, went to the making of the story. His eyes 
and expression! they often told half his story. 
Many a time the bells surprised us at the midst of 
his soul-stirring recital, and suddenly called us 
back to the unromantic light of modern day and to 
the homely exercises of school. The stories were 
told to us serially, in the hours of intermission and 



30 A JAPANESE BOY. 

were a sort of optional course. They were so 
popular that very few were found playing about 
the grounds when the eloquent romancer proceeded 
in his narrative. 

Yet he was not a man of weak indulgence toward 
the boys; his sense of duty was equally strong. 
If a youngster was seen undertaking to do any- 
thing naughty he would give him a stern look, his 
cheeks were inflated, his eyes showed the white 
plainly. The whole room was then silent as a 
tomb. But if a fun-loving fellow ventured, per- 
haps, to thrust out his little tongue roguishly or let 
out a giggle behind his hand, then the teacher 
irresistibly relaxed the corners of his mouth, and 
in another moment the hall rang with the hilarious 
laughter of reconciliation and good-fellowship. 

Later I came under the instruction of different 
masters, but he it was who led me in infancy so 
carefully by the hand, as it were, to the first step 
of ^the ladder of knowledge, and he it will be who 
shall remain the longest in my memory. 

At school the common mode of punishment was 
to let the culprit stand erect a whole hour to- 
gether, facing his own class or a class in an adjoin- 
ing room. Although no dunce-cap was on his 
head, a roomful of staring eyes struck a burning 
shame into his soul. Nevertheless, urchins there 
were who considered it a supreme delight to be 
taken off the troublesome exercises and carried to 
the next room on a visit, where they had made 
many acquaintances at a previous banishment. 
Indeed, they had become so inured to it that they 
thought nothing of it afterward. 



BY HIMSELF. 31 

Once the whole school, except a few good chil- 
dren, incurred the teachers' displeasure. I have 
forgotten what the offence was ; all were prevented 
from going home after school and ordered to stand 
up till -dark, each with a bowl full of water. There 
they stood like a regiment of begging saints with 
the bowls in the outstretched arms, which if they 
moved the water ran over the brim, and the 
delinquents would have been whipped. At first 
we thought it capital fun, because so many were in 
company to commiserate; we laughed aloud, 
bobbed and courtesied to the teachers in mockery ; 
but in time we had to change our minds. The 
result of standing still like a statue began to tell 
upon us ; our limbs began to ache and feel stiff ; 
the j oiliest member gave a cowardly sob ; and the 
patient fellow in the corner, hitherto unnoticed, 
attracted public attention by dropping the burden. 
The china went to pieces. He blubbered out, as if 
that was sufficient apology. Through the inter- 
cession of some kindly folk we finally came home 
to supper and comfort. 

We were continually threatened with another 
method of punishment, though I doubt if the teach- 
ers would have inflicted it on us. It was an intol- 
erably cruel one: the offender was compelled to 
stand up with a lighted bundle of senkoes until it 
burned down close to his hand. The senko is a 
slender incense stick burned before the shrine of 
Buddha and of our ancestors, and manufactured 
by kneading a certa^ aromatic powder to a paste 
and squeezing it out into innumerable very slim, 
extremely fragile, brownish rods. When dry, these 



32 A JAPANESE BOY. 

are gathered into good-sized bundles and put in the 
market. A few cents will buy you more senkoes 
than you need. As the bundle burns away slowly 
— slowly to prolong the agony, the fire encroaches 
on the skin and the flesh. Unless the offender 
surrenders himself to the heartless will of his 
pedagogue he must suffer injury from the heat. 
This punishment was actually in practice in old 
days when the tyrannical masters had their way, 
but went out of fashion at the dawn of civiliza- 
tion. 

Our teachers carried flexible sticks, which they 
played with while teaching, or used in pointing at 
the maps ; they never whipped anybody with them 
to my knowledge; but in going their rounds 
among the pupils, if any were engaged in conversa- 
tion or in any way inattentive, flogged the table 
before them in such a manner as to cause the poor 
fellows to jump into the air. 



BY HIMSELF. 33 



CHAPTEE V. 

When the close of a day called me home from 
school, and my father's work was done, a sense of 
contentment and repose brooded over our house- 
hold. A vigorous scrub at a public bath often 
gave our tired bodies a renewed muscular tone. I 
accompanied my father to this resort ; when I was 
very young, my mother carried me thither. The 
bath-house is a private establishment of its pro- 
prietor, and public in the sense that townspeople 
betake themselves to it without restraint. The 
charge is only a few mills for the adult, half the 
amount for the child and nothing for the suckling. 
If a number of checks (branded, flat pieces of 
wood) be purchased at one time, the average charge 
is still less. In Imabari, there are a dozen or more 
of these baths; they mostly occupy the corners 
of the streets like American drug stores. They 
are opened from late in the afternoon till late at 
night ; on holidays accommodation baths are ready 
at early daybreak. As soon as a bath is in readi- 
ness, its keeper places a flag at the eaves, in the 
daytime, and a square, paper lantern after dusk. 
At the entrance is a stand, where you deposit your 
fare, and exchange a word on the weather with 
the keeper if you are neighborly. Advancing a 
3 



34 A JAPANESE BOY. 

few steps, you leave your clogs on a low platform, 
on the sides of which rise tiers of lockers for 
clothes. You must bring your own towels ; ladies 
also take with them little cotton bags of rice-bran. 
They close the bags tightly with strings, soak them 
in hot water and rub their faces and hands with the 
wet balls. The process is said to refine the texture 
of the skin wonderfully. 

The bath proper is a great, covered tank, full of 
hot water, with a terrace-work of planks sloping 
down on the four sides, where you sit and wash. 
The ceiling is low enough to bump your head unless 
you are cautious ; it projects forward and stoops to 
prevent the steam from escaping unnecessarily; 
therefore, even when it is lighted within, it is twi- 
light, owing to the confined vapor. One feels in it 
as if working in a mine or tunnel. Older men 
discuss town topics and business, and young men 
hum popular airs as they bathe, and intimate- 
friends press each other to rub down their backs. 
The water is kept warm by a huge metallic heater 
behind, which is in communication with the tank 
but covered with planks so as not to scald the 
bathers' feet. In case the water proves too hot, the 
bathers consult each other's comfort courteously, 
and one of them claps his hands. It is answered 
by a sound at the entrance stand, and immediately 
cold water spouts into the tank. Then the men 
stir the tank thoroughly on all sides. Being but a 
child I took great delight in the excitement. I 
would creep up to the hole and plug it with my 
wet towel, and after a few minutes pull it out 
abruptly to see the water spurt forth with re- 



BY HIMSELF. 35 

doubled energy. The wall has usually a small 
door; pushing it open the fireman peeps in occa- 
sionally, when there is too much noise. The first 
time I noticed it, I was almost scared out of. my 
wits ; for, happening to look around, I saw on the 
dim wall a grim human head staring me in the 
face. 

Between the tank and the floor is a space paved 
with large, flat, rectangular stones and cemented 
with mortar, where the people who think it too 
close in the tank can step out and wash, sitting on 
long, narrow benches ; in some baths this place is 
overlaid with planks in such a manner that water 
can trickle down between them. Here we may 
use soap, but not in the tank. Several small 
wooden tubs are near at hand ; with them we pour 
the hot water over our body after rubbing, and in 
them we give our towels a final clean- water wash- 
ing when through using them. The clear, cold 
water for the latter purpose is constantly bubbling 
up in a shallow, well-like enclosure hard by. A 
couple of dippers float in it, and the people also 
drink of the water, if thirsty. In well-regulated 
baths, near the cold-water enclosure is a hot water 
cistern, constantly fed through a bamboo pipe with 
boiling water that has not been used. People of 
cleanly habits, on emerging from the common 
tank, dip out this fresh, warm, water and bathe 
again. Of course, it would be objectionable to 
retain the same water in the tank all day and have 
people bathe in it over and over ; as a matter of 
fact, a portion of it is drawn off at intervals and 
replaced with a fresh supply. 



36 A JAPANESE BOY. 

The ladies' side is precisely the same in arrange- 
ment as the gentlemen's; a partition, however, 
separates them completely. 

If you meet a man on the street in Japan with a 
wet towel hanging on his shoulder, he is from the 
public bath. He wears no hat even in sallying 
forth into the open air from the confined atmos- 
phere, walks leisurely along, dragging the high 
clogs and feeling thoroughly comfortable. In sum- 
mer evenings, while maidens, mothers and children 
are cooling themselves in the breeze on movable 
platforms in front of their residences, young men 
from the bath come strolling up, inquire politely 
after their health and make themselves agreeable. 
As the after-bath garment and towel are to be thus 
exhibited before the eyes of their admirers new 
fashions arise every year in regard to them. The 
fashion changes not so much in tailoring as in the 
color and pattern. 

We are not without private baths, too. Large 
aristocratic families are all provided with them. 
The bath-house is usually fitted up in a wing at the 
back of the building ; in it a tub large enough to 
admit a person in a squatting position is placed on 
a caldron. The loose wooden bottom of the tub is 
left floating while the water boils, serving as the 
cover; it is fastened afterward. The head of the 
family goes in first ; after him, his wife ; then come 
their children, beginning with the eldest; after 
them follow the domestics, ranged according to 
their relative importance. 

Evenings at home were always spent very pleas- 
antly, especially before my sisters were married 



BY HIMSELF. 3? 

and went away. There were four of them, exclud- 
ing the eldest who had left us a good while ago, but 
used to visit us, and add to our gayety. What did 
we do to enjoy ourselves? We had music and 
dancing very often, singing, of course, parties to 
which our best friends came, games of cards, 
social chat and fireside talk — whatever goes to 
make home attractive. Mother took great interest 
in them herself ; she chaperoned the girls — we had 
young ladies of the neighborhood come to us, and 
our house was looked upon as one of the social foci 
of little Imabari. But a reverse in my father's 
fortune and frequent change of abode put an end 
to those happy days of yore. 

Japanese dancing, I declare without prejudice, 
is more elaborate and graceful than your round 
and square dances, but may not be as fasci- 
nating; ladies and gentlemen do not dance to- 
gether. Moreover, our dancing is not anything 
that can be picked up at balls and receptions, nor 
is it learned by hopping and skipping at the danc- 
ing academy. In fact, it is not the simple keeping 
time with music, not repetitions of the same steps 
over and over again ; it is composed of posturing 
and is more like acting, though the manoeuvres are 
predetermined, in regular order, and not left to 
the dancer's fancy. Here in America dancing is 
easily acquired by persons who have an ear for 
music and grace of carriage, and after having 
learned to waltz "elegantly" or "divinely" they 
have practically mastered all other figures. In 
Japan, each figure is emphatically a new one, and 
there are many, many figures with distinct names ; 



38 A JAPANESE BOt. 

one cannot learn them all— each figure requires a 
separate effort for its mastery. A dance lasts 
twenty minutes or more ; scarcely two steps in it 
seem alike. In learning a Japanese dance one 
begins with little tosses of the head, engaging 
sways of the body and easy movements of the ex- 
tremities. 

Many young girls of the town practised the 
primary exercises in our house; they came to ask 
assistance of my second sister, who excelled the 
rest in dancing. I see her vivacious figure trip up 
to a beginner, who struck an awkward attitude, 
and correct a twist of the neck as the barber and 
the photographer fix their customers' heads. She 
taught my youngest sister very thoroughly in all 
the dances she knew, and after that mother put 
Mitsu (that is the name of my little sister) under 
the special tuition of a lady who had just then 
arrived from Osaka, a great centre of enjoyment 
and politeness. The dancing mistress had a very 
pretty adopted daughter who assisted her, and 
they together aroused enthusiasm among the peo- 
ple of Imabari in the art of grace. A society 
formed itself naturally with the lady as the nu- 
cleus, and a scheme was projected for a public 
exhibition of dances. The parents of the dancing 
children manifested more zeal than the children 
themselves. As they came in for it with willing 
heart and liberal hand, the scheme was pushed 
forward with surprising rapidity. A mammoth 
curtain was made that was to be hoisted in the 
theatre where the brilliant events were to take 
place ; it had painted on it numerous big fans, and 



BY HIMSELF. 39 

on the fans were written the names of the mem- 
bers. My[big brother was busily engaged in paint- 
ing scenes and constructing apparatus, my sisters 
were diligently selecting stage dresses for Mitsu. 
And then the young ladies met in our place to re- 
hearse the dances, songs and instrumental music, 
that made us still more agreeably busy. Weeks 
were spent in preparation ; and when it came off 
at last, the entertainment was a grand affair con- 
tinuing for several days ; the town turned out in a 
body. It was more like successful theatricals than 
anything, and was repeated once or twice after- 
wards, with the substitution for the former dances 
of many equally classical pieces. 

All the dances are accompanied by songs and 
instruments. The instrument most commonly 
used is the samisen; it looks somewhat like a 
banjo, but is much larger and has a square body 
instead of a round one ; the wood- work is of ma- 
hogany. In playing it the touching is not done 
with the fingers, but with a plectrum of ivory. 
The samisen is capable of giving out both the mel- 
low notes of the guitar and the sharp tone-sprays 
of the banjo. You hear it played in Japanese 
homes to the same extent as the piano is in this 
country. We had in our family two or three 
samisens, and every day my sisters practised on 
them. 

Other instruments of music are the koto, the 
tsuzumi and the drum. The koto is a heavy, thir- 
teen-stringed instrument, of which by mere de- 
scription I can hardly give an idea. The player 
sits before it, and with claws fitted to the fin- 



40 A JAPANESE BOY. 

gers of both hands plays at the two ends. The 
tsuzumi is an hour-glass-shaped drum which is 
tapped with the right hand. Two tsuzumis are 
frequently played by a single person; a light 
tsuzumi is laid on the right shoulder and held by 
the left hand, and a heavy tsuzumi is rested on the 
left knee slightly elevated and pressed down with 
the left elbow ; the right hand is free to move be- 
tween the two tsuzumis whieh it beats. The light 
tsuzumi emits a soft tone, the heavy one a deep 
sound. The stroke, unless skillfully performed, 
often inflicts a violent injury to the fingers. The 
vellum of the tsuzumi is of fox skin and yellow in 
color, that of the samisen is of cat skin and white as 
snow. The drum is not the sort drubbed in a mili- 
tary band ; it is smaller and more moderate in its 
intonation. 

These instruments, — the koto, samisen, taiko 
(drum) and tsuzumi are frequently played in con- 
cert; the samisen players — two of them, at any 
rate, to one of the others — sing in high pitch while 
their supple fingers twinkle across the chords; the 
taiko and tsuzumi beaters shriek now and then as 
they thrum and whack. Do I like it? Isn't it 
hideous? Well, I can't say how it would strike me 
now ; yet I used to think it all very fine. 

There is another stringed instrument, a ridicu- 
lously simple one that I liked best. It is named 
ichigecckin. A plain board, a few feet in length, 
and a few inches in width, with no other orna- 
ment than half a dozen Chinese characters written 
on it to indicate the various keys; only a single 
string along the whole length ; a bamboo ring for 



BY HIMSELF. 41 

the middle finger of the left hand to touch on the 
keys ; and a small flat piece of horn to pick the string 
with : these make up an ichigecckin. The origin 
of this unpretentious instrument is said to be as 
follows : a high court noble of amiable disposition 
and poetic temperament on his way southward 
from the ancient palace in Kioto, years ago, was 
obliged to moor near the beautiful shores of Akashi 
on account of a heavy storm. The sea tossed 
about his boat ; the sky stretched gray ; the thatch 
overhead became soaked in the rain; the wind 
sighed among the pines on the deserted shore. A 
sense of loneliness weighed on his gentle nature. 
The fading landscape in the dusk, the mournful 
cry of a sea-gull, the sight of a boat miles away 
laboring in the waves, peradventure laden with 
lives— all conspired to produce in him a sadness 
more than human. In order to beguile his ennui, 
he constructed himself a rude musical instrument 
with a board and string, and poured out the feel- 
ings of the hour in many a celebrated tune. The 
ichigecckin music is low and simple and sweet. 
On rainy nights, when the candle burns dim and 
all is quiet, I feel most in the mood to listen. 

Japanese music is in a crude state of develop- 
ment; there are no written notes to go by in 
playing, nor in singing is there any system like 
your "Do, Re, Mi, etc," to depend upon. As yet it 
is strictly an art and not a science ; one is obliged 
to get it by observation, imitation and practice. 
Music is taught by lady teachers; but a set of 
blind men, who perform massage for a livelihood, 
take scholars, likewise. They have their heads 



42 A JAPANESE BOY. 

shaved, walk abroad alone, feeling their way with 
sticks; some of them have been to Osaka and 
Kioto for a musical degree, conferred on them in 
certain schools. In Japan music is not divided 
into the vocal and the instrumental; the two 
are always taught together by the same in- 
structor. 

Vocal cultivation is conducted in a singular way. 
During the winter the girl in training clothes her- 
self comfortably, takes a samisen and ascends 
every cold night the scaffold erected on the roof 
of the house for drying purposes. There she sits 
for hours together amid the howling blasts, singing 
defiantly and banging away courageously at the 
samisen. Upon her coming down, she is found 
worse than hoarse ; she can hardly utter a word. 
The training is observed persistently until her for- 
mer voice has entirely left her and gradually a 
clear new voice, as it were, breaks out in the harsh- 
ness. This voice can stand a storm. The disci- 
pline is now over, a little care needs only to be 
exercised in the maintenance of the acquired voice. 
The practice, I am well aware, will hardly com- 
mend itself to the gentlewomen of this republic, 
who are wrapped all winter long in furs and seal- 
skins and would not think for a moment of leaving 
the chimney corner. In my fancy I hear them re- 
pel it with their passionate " What an idea!" 
Therefore, I conclude it prudent to say nothing in 
praise of the barbarous measure, and simply state 
the plain fact that it has produced many an Apollo 
in Japan. In the other seasons of the year, after 
having screamed out her worthless voice, the girl 



HY HIMSELF. 43 

takes a dose of pulverized ginger and sugar to tone 
up the vocal chords. 

I digressed from dancing to music ; now I wish 
to return to dancing again for a few moments. In 
parlor gatherings and sociables light pieces are pre- 
sented; and such small things as fans, towels, 
masks, umbrellas, bells, tambourines only are used 
in dancing. Fans are most commonly used, many 
astonishing tricks being played with them. The 
guests sit in a body off the arena, where the dancer 
steps out; the samisen player tunes the instru- 
ment on one side. The preliminary chords ring; 
then come the words in song, and in accordance with 
them the actions of the dancer. The dances in- 
tended for the stage are much more elaborate. 
Scenes are to be fitted up ; varieties of gew-gaws, — 
artificial flowers, falling paper snow, fallen woolly- 
cotton snow, painted waves, the outline of a boat, 
a lantern moon, a gilded paper crown, baskets, 
shells, a wooden scythe, a toy tub, high clogs, 
yards of white silk, etc., etc., — are to be procured. 
These vain, empty articles rise up in my mind, for 
I used to see them stowed away in the dusty garret. 
They were jostled about by other things, lay in 
everybody's way, became mutilated, and fully re- 
paid the glory they had received one night behind 
the foot-lights. We have spent time and money 
in getting them up, however; certain things we 
have even sent for to Osaka or Kioto. I remem- 
ber seeing my sister practise day after day dancing 
with the aforementioned long white silk scarfs. 
The dance was to represent the process of bleach- 
ing by a famous maiden (named Okan6) who 



44 A JAPANESE BOY. 

dwelt beside Lake Biwa. Of all sorts of waves and 
undulations and flutterings she had to produce 
with them I recollect one : — it is to shake one scarf 
right and left horizontally overhead, and the other 
up and down longitudinally in front. Try it with 
your hands and see, reader ; you will find it no easy 
task. In the stage dances the dancers must dress 
true to the conceptions of the characters they un- 
dertake to represent. This necessitates a large 
wardrobe, though the gorgeous costumes are gen- 
erally made of cheap materials, and the aid of 
artificial lights is expected to finish off the 
effects. The face of the dancer is usually painted, 
but not so much so as that of a professional actress. 
The whole affair, however, savors strongly of 
stage-play. Several persons sometimes dance to- 
gether, carry on dialogues and, indeed, dance part 
of a play or drama, 



BY HIMSELF. 45 



CHAPTER VI. 

Our best friends were not limited to ladies, but 
comprised several select gentlemen. In Japan we 
have more social freedom than people are apt to 
think. Many of the young gentlemen entertained 
us well. Some were beautiful singers, others fine 
musicians, and still others elegant dancers. One 
among them, a person of fine appearance who fell 
in love with the dancing teacher's pretty daughter 
and who afterward married her, was quite highly 
accomplished. He possessed artistic tastes, prob- 
ably inherited from his father, who was an art 
connoisseur — art, as it appeared in china wares, 
scrolls, kakemonoes (wall hangings), old bric-a- 
brac, etc. The young man could sketch, talk 
brilliantly, render gentlemen's dances creditably, 
and was handsome to look at. He used to pay us 
respects, for his parents, particularly his cheery 
bright-eyed little mother, was a dear friend of 
ours, and his sisters were great friends of my 
sisters. The girls went to sewing school together. 
You know, as we do not have the sewing machine 
and as we are to a certain extent our own tailors 
and dressmakers, Japanese girls must take lessons 
in sewing, as American young ladies take lessons 
in painting and on the piano. They do "crazy" 



46 A JAPANESE BOY. 

work and fancy work, too, and talk over their 
notions extravagantly, rashly confide everything 
to each other, and exclaim " lovely! " in Japanese. 

This young man felt from his childhood a passion 
for the stage. As he grew up his dramatic taste 
became irresistible ; at last, escaping the vigilance 
of his family, he ran away to the neighboring prov- 
ince of Tosa (ours is Iyo), and committed himself 
to the care of a noted actor named Hanshiro. The 
young man told us how he had been launched in 
the work ; the actor-apprentice, when admitted to 
the stage, is obliged to put on rags and help make 
up the mob or a gang of thieves. In order to make 
a hero's power appear greater by contrast, it is a 
stage trick in Japan that the mob, thieves, and 
characters of that sort should turn somersaults at 
the hero's simple lifting of his hand. It is a sight 
to be seen when a swarm of them around one brave 
person turn in the air and light safely upon their 
feet ; they do it so very deftly that they must prac- 
tice a great deal. Our friend first practiced the acro- 
batic feat on a thick quilt for fear that he might 
break his neck. In time, however, he could do it 
on the hard wooden stage floor. After filling this 
gymnastic role for some time, he was promoted by 
degrees to more important posts. By reason of his 
personal attractions he was at his best as a gallant 
youth. I have observed many a fair spectator 
flush visibly, heave gentle sighs and watch him in 
absorption while he delivered a love soliloquy in a 
clear voice. 

He did become an actor in the fullest sense of the 
term and a creditable one, too 5 but having satisfied 



BY HIMSELF. 47 

his long cherished desire for once (a space of sev- 
eral years), he obeyed the paternal summons and 
returned home. He then went into business and 
fairly settled down to earnest life. Nevertheless, 
at times his roving nature got the better of him, 
and the young man would be missed from home. 
Soon the news arrives from somewhere that he is 
displaying his dramatic talents with a theatrical 
company to the utmost delight of the people, and 
that the showers of favors and tokens of their ap- 
preciation visit him constantly. But the manner 
in which his aged parents take the affair is by it- 
self a bit of good comedy. They bemoan them- 
selves over their son's unsteady life, and often in 
their visit to us seek our condolence. Notwith- 
standing the apparent sorrow, whenever their boy 
has been heard to make a " decided hit " none are 
more pleased than they. The old couple, being 
themselves fond of gayety, extended a helping, 
willing hand to the dancing society wherein their 
son moved actively. It was, indeed, under the 
supervision of the good old gentleman that the 
huge curtain was completed ; I think he designed 
and painted it mostly by himself. 

Our young friend's presence in town naturally 
gave rise to a race of amateur actors. One of them 
particularly I recall with great interest on ac- 
count of his diverse accomplishments ; he tried his 
hand at almost every trade. I believe certain pecu- 
liarities in his childhood induced his parents to put 
him in a monastery. He grew up a studious boy, 
but indulged not infrequently in pranks. Suddenly 
in his early manhood it dawned upon him that he 



48 A JAPANESE BOY. 

was richly endowed with the stage gift; accord- 
ingly, he left the temple behind, and, after clerking 
a while in his brother's store across the street from 
us, appeared on the stage. His versatile nature 
did not keep him long in that vocation ; he soon 
sobered down to a shoemaker, discovering that the 
bread earned by the sweat of the brow was more 
to his satisfaction. That is, I concluded so in his 
case ; he may have found, for aught I know, that 
by acting (such as his) he could not make a decent 
living and therefore had better quit playing. He 
was not long in making another discovery, and 
that was that the drudgery of the shop did not 
exactly suit his refined tastes. At all events, he 
must take a little air sometimes ; he would go about 
the streets selling greens ; yes, that was a splendid 
plan, combining trade and exercise. And so he 
turned a vegetable vender this time, nobody re- 
garding it a too humble occupation in such a small 
community as ours. Later he became an amazake 
man. The amazake (sweet liquor) is prepared by 
subjecting soft boiled rice to saccharine fermenta- 
tion and checking the process just at the point 
where the sugar gives up its alcohol. Hence it is 
sweet, palatable and very popular with children. 
We brewed some at home — the home-brewed! 
My mother had hard work to satisfy the large 
family of thirsty mouths. 

Our man of all trades went about asking the 
public in all the notes of the gamut, if they would 
not tickle their palates with his honest ' ' sweet 
liquor." To be always on foot as an itinerant 
tradesman, however, proved too much for his con- 



BY HIMSELF. 49 

stitution. I will not take it upon me to enumerate 
in what other things he tried his hand ; I hasten 
on to inform my curious reader that he shaved 
his head again and joined the priesthood, perfectly 
content with his diverse worldly experiences. In 
spite of his fickleness he was an honest fellow and 
passed for a tolerable humorist among his friends. 
There was another of the number, the keeper 
of the tavern at the foot of a bridge that spans the 
little stream running through Imabari town. His 
figure was tall, imposing, and his expression dis- 
posed one to suspect him of a malicious, bitter 
character. Nature is often capricious; she was 
certainly capricious in this instance, for into this 
mould of a man she had infused a nature the most 
complacent and the most obliging. His comrades 
assigned him the part of a villain or a cruel lord. 
To the eye familiar with his every-day life he 
figured helplessly as a villain with a good heart, and 
seemed to spare unnecessary stabs at his victim. 
Yet he was scrupulously conscientious in the exe- 
cution of his role ; not a word would he omit in his 
speech. Once in playing a wicked lord, in order to 
assist the memory he copied his entire part on 
the face of a flat, oblong piece of wood, which he 
had all the time to bear erect before him as an 
ensign of authority. At first on the stage he was 
wonderfully eloquent, not a flaw occurred in his 
long speech. But unfortunately in the midst of an 
invective the sceptre slipped off his hand. His 
lordship's confusion was not to be described. He 
paused as if to give an effect of indignation, then 
tried to think of the rest of the harangue ; it did 
4 



50 A JAPANESE BOY. 

not come. The pause was prolonged to his own 
uneasiness as well as to his friends. He now cast 
about for a decent means of taking himself off the 
stage. Finally with a calm, venerable, haughty 
air, amid giggles and suppressed laughter, my lord 
stalked off behind the scene. 

Through these people we became acquainted 
with several professional players. Some people in 
Japan become quite enthusiastic over their favor- 
ite actors and wrestlers; they present them with 
beautiful posters, on which are stated their gifts, 
exaggerated above their actual value. These post- 
ers are pasted on all sides of the theatre or the 
arena for display. At the entrance to the house of 
amusement stands a tower, where a small drum of 
very high pitch is struck for some time previous 
to the opening of the performance. The admission 
to the theatre ranges from five to twenty-five sens 
(cents). The stage and the inside as a whole are 
much larger than any metropolitan or local play- 
house that I have seen in America. I admit that 
most of our theatres are neither carpeted nor fur- 
nished with chairs, nor are they lighted with gas, 
nor heated. The parquet is divided into pits by 
bars, each admitting barely four persons in a squat- 
ting position; the bars can be removed, uniting 
the small pits into one large pit of any dimensions, 
if a party so desire. There are also what will corre- 
spond to the dress circle and the family circle. 
They do not protrude over the parquet, but simply 
line the walls like balconies. In the parquet the 
floor is not raised at the end farther from the 
stage; therefore, if Japanese ladies were to wear 



BY HIMSELF. 51 

tall hats it would be the doomsday for gentlemen ; 
but luckily the fair members of our community 
take no pride in the towering head ornaments; 
really they wear none. I have been speaking as 
if the parquet were floored; in fact, you have to 
sit close to the ground, mats and quilts of your 
own providing alone protecting you from the 
damp earth. 

The people bring lunch with them to eat between 
the acts. I have the fond remembrance of my 
family astir over the preparation of the lunch on 
the day we go to see a play. We must take things 
we shall not be ashamed of spreading before the 
public; and all the more must we be careful in 
selecting our dishes, for not infrequently we 
beckon to our acquaintances in the audience to 
pass away with us the usual long, wearisome 
intervals of the Japanese theatre, during which 
time no music is played as in the American 
theatre. Of course, we must take boiled rice; it 
is our bread. Nobody thinks of forgetting the 
bread. It is not, however, carried in its bare, 
glutinous form; it is made into triangular, round 
or square masses and rolled in burned bean 
powder. In the collation at the theatre we dis- 
pense with the bowls and chopsticks, and use 
fingers in picking up the mouthfuls of rice. Of 
various other dishes I give up the cataloguing in 
despair, for my ingenious countrywomen regale 
us with — the Lord knows how many kinds. The 
delicacies are packed in several lacquered boxes, 
and the boxes piled one over another and wrapped 
in a broad piece of cloth, whose four corners are 



52 A JAPANESE BOY. 

then tied on the top. When the savory burden is 
being carried, there usually dangles by it a gourd 
full of sake. The Japanese world takes no note 
of drinking; the sake is, moreover, mild, and, 
although sipped on all occasions as freely as tea, is 
seldom drunk to excess. 

Next to the refreshment preparation is the get- 
ting ready of the girls. They spend half their life 
in dressing. I never was very patient ; in waiting 
for them I was exasperated. They would lean over 
against the glass (or in reality a metallic mirror) 
in the Yum- Yum fashion for an interminable 
period of time, tying the girdles over fifty times be- 
fore deciding upon one style, touching and retouch- 
ing the coiffures, and practicing the exercise of 
grace. "Oh, hurry up!" I cry repeatedly in in- 
finite chagrin, and at last become irritated beyond 
decency, when my mother in her persuasive, firm 
manner desires me to know that there is time 
enough. I always acquiesced in mother's deci- 
sions, because I did not like to have her call in the 
assistance of father. I can tell you what; lie would 
do ! He would not say a word ; he would curtly 
command me to sit beside him in the store, where 
people could look at me— my tears, sobs, quivering 
lips and all the rest of the woe. Out of shame in 
the exposure I would gradually compose myself, 
and not till I had fully recovered my temper 
would my father release me. I think he never 
struck me or my brother anywhere ; the only time 
I saw him use force was in holding fast my little 
brother, who once undertook some brave proceed- 
ings against him, 



BY HIMSELF. 53 

The theatre usually begins late in the afternoon 
or early in the evening, and lasts till past midnight. 
In front of the stage are two large basins of vege- 
table oil with huge bunches of rush- wicks. They 
are the main sources of light ; the foot-lights are a 
row of innumerable wax-candles; and when an 
actor is on the stage, men in black veils attend him 
with lighted candles stuck on a contrivance like a 
long-handled contribution box. Wherever he goes, 
there go with him these walking candlesticks. 
When he exerts himself briskly, as in a combat, 
with w^hat funny jerks and fanciful motions do 
these mysterious lights fly round, often flickering 
themselves out! In the era of gas and electric 
light what a bungling machinery all this is ! 

The orchestra does not sit at the foot of the stage ; 
it occupies a box on one side. It consists of the 
samisen, a big heavy bell, a drum, a flute, a conch 
shell and occasional singing. Over the orchestra- 
box is a compartment hung with a curtain woven 
with fine split bamboos, wherein sit two men — one 
with a book on a stand, the other with a stout 
samisen. The former explains in a harsh-voiced 
recital the situation of the affairs now acted before 
the audience, the latter keeps time with the instru- 
ment. 

The dramas are mostly historical; we have no 
opera. In Japanese plays the passion of love takes 
but a subordinate rank, the paramount importance 
being accorded to loyalty, the spirit of retaliation 
and devotion to parents. Harakiri, or the cutting 
open of one's own abdomen in "way of manly death, 
so time-honored and deeply believed in among 



54 A JAPANESE BOY. 

the ancient samurai (soldier) class, is acted in con- 
nection with certain plays. It is an impressive, 
solemn scene. The valiant unfortunate stabs him- 
self with a poniard, measuring exactly nine inches 
and a half, struggles with agony, shows manifold 
changes of expression, makes his will in a falter- 
ing voice, and leaves injunctions to the weeping 
relatives and faithful servants gathered round him ; 
writhing in distress, yet undaunted in presence of 
cool, examining deputies, he ends his mortal life by 
the final act of driving the blood-stained iron into 
the throat. 

One strange fact respecting the theatrical profes- 
sion in our country is the anomaly that men act 
women's parts. We have few or no actresses. The 
taste of the people took a curious turn in its de- 
velopment ; they consider those actors perfect who 
can deceive them most dexterously in female out- 
fits. Acting has been from ages past regarded as 
a profession exclusively for men; their wives 
travel with them as a sort of slave in assisting 
their masters and husbands in painting and dress- 
ing behind the scene. Therefore, once when a 
company of women went about giving entertain- 
ments there was a considerable stir over the nov- 
elty; they soon became known as the "female 
theatre." In this party there were few or no men, 
the women assuming male characters. These 
actresses established fame on their wonderfully 
natural delineations of masculine traits. 

We have known a young actor, whose boyhood 
was spent in Imabari, make a mark in representing 
female characters. He copied the grace and de- 



BY HIMSELF. 55 

portment of the fair sex archly. We took great 
interest in him, for he was a good, quiet, sensible 
fellow, and his parents had formerly dwelt near 
and befriended us. But my friends were wont to 
comment that his neck was a jot too full for that of 
a female. He could not help that ; the corpulency 
of that member was a freak of nature ; he was not 
at all responsible for it. Discreetly he tried none 
of your fooleries with dieting to reduce it ; some 
females, you know, are not very slender-necked 
either ; he might have taken comfort in that. At 
any rate, his manners were thoroughly feminine, 
and his womanly way of speaking a woman her- 
self could not imitate. Our friend is now gone to 
a metropolis, where he is winning his way into the 
hearts of the millions. Prosperity and success to 
his name ! 

When the "female theatre" troupe was in Ima- 
bari, through somebody's introduction we got 
acquainted with certain of their number. We 
asked them to call at our house. They did so. 
We observed no trace of forwardness in them ; in- 
stead, they, all of them, seemed quite reticent. I 
remember a dear little creature, Kosei (Little 
Purity) by name, among them. She was perfectly 
at ease in playing a rollicking little rogue before 
the crowd, but now hung her head timidly and 
lifted stealthily her big round eyes to us. She 
had a sweet, pretty little mouth. "Where can that 
poor, mischievous, pretty waif be knocking about 
in the wide world now-a-days? Perhaps she 
is grown up and uninteresting, if yet living. 

I can recall even what we gave them that even- 



56 A JAPANESE BOY. 

ing with which to refresh themselves. We ordered 
the zenzai or its ally, the shiruko, at the establish- 
ment round the corner. The shiruko seems like 
hot, thick chocolate, with bits of toast in it. The 
chocolate part is prepared of red beans, and the 
toast is the browned mochi (rice-cake). To pro- 
vide for any among them that did not love sweet 
things we had the soba or the udon brought to us 
by their vender. The soba is a sort of vermicelli 
made of buckwheat, and the udon a kind of maca- 
roni, solid and not in tubes. The warm katsuwo 
sauce is plentifully poured over them, and they 
are eaten with chopsticks. The katsuwo sauce is 
prepared of the katsuwobushi and the shoyu. The 
first named article is a hard substance shaped 
somewhat like the horn of an ox, and manufac- 
tured of the flesh of certain fish, whose vernacular 
name is katsuwo. A family cannot get along with- 
out it. In preparing the sauce, the katsuwobushi 
is simply chipped and simmered in a mixture of 
water and the shoyu. The shoyu is a sauce by 
itself and brewed of wheat, beans and salt. As 
its use in domestic cookery is very wide, the de- 
mand for it is correspondingly great; and the 
shoyu brewing is as big a business as the sake 
manufacturing. 



BY HIMSELF. 5? 



CHAPTER VII. 

Our family cared but little for the wrestling ex- 
hibition ; some people have a great liking for it. It 
takes place on an extensive open lot. In the middle 
of the field is raised a large, square mound, from 
the corners of which rise four posts decorated with 
red and white cloths, looking like a barber's sign. 
They support an awning. The spectators, too, are 
shielded from the sun with cheap mats strapped 
together. On the mound is described a circle, 
within which the matches take place. The two 
opposite parties are called East and West respect- 
ively. The umpire in kamishimo (ceremonial 
garb) calls out a champion from each side by his 
professional name so loudly as to be heard all over 
the place. The names are derived from the mighty 
objects in nature, such as mountain, river, ocean, 
storm, wind, thunder, lightning, forest, crag, etc. 
The two naked, gigantic, muscular fellows slowly 
ascend the arena, drink a little water from ladles, 
take pinches of common salt from small baskets 
hanging on two of the posts and, looking up rever- 
ently to a paper god fastened to the awning, throw 
the salt around. It is an act of purification, and 
while doing it each prays secretly for his own 
success. Then they stamp heavily on the ground, 



58 A JAPANESE BOY. 

with their hands on their bent knees and their hips 
lowered, in order to get the muscles ready for 
action. Now they face each other in a low sitting 
posture like that of a frog ; at the word of signal 
from the umpire they instantly spring up, and 
each tries to throw the other or push him out of 
the circular arena. There are many professional 
tricks that they deal out in the struggle for suprem- 
acy. As soon as the point is decided the umpire 
indicates the victor's side with his Chinese fan. 
Then follows the demonstration of joy among the 
patrons of the successful almost as boisterous and 
enthusiastic as that of the young American colle- 
gians at their grand athletic contests. The thou- 
sands sitting hitherto well behaved on the matted 
ground rise up at once and make endless tumult ; 
cups, bottles, empty lacquered boxes fly into the 
arena from every direction. Not infrequently a 
spirited controversy follows a questionable decision 
of the umpire. Between the matches gifts from 
the patrons are publicly announced and sometimes 
displayed. 

The people sit on the ground, spread with mats, 
in the open air, and eat and drink, while they 
watch the collision of the two mountains of flesh 
and its momentous issue. The exhibition cannot 
very well take place on rainy days. At the end of 
a day's performance, all the wrestlers in gorgeous 
aprons march to the arena as the umpire claps two 
blocks of hard wood, and go through a simple cere- 
mony of stretching the arms in various directions 
formally. I never inquired what it was for, my 
childish fancy having been turned toward the 



BY HIMSELF. 59 

aprons, which were oriental gold embroidery- work 
in relief on velvet, plush and other kinds of cloth. 
On the way home the spectators notice on the 
fences the announcement of the matches for the 
morrow. At the close of a series of the contests, 
which continue about three days, the favorite 
wrestlers go the round of their patrons in fine 
silk garments. 

We were fond of listening to story-tellers. The 
entertainment takes place at night in a public hall. 
A company of story-tellers travel together under 
the name of their leader. In the early part of the 
evening the unskillful members come out in turn, 
and serve to kill time and practice on the audience. 
On the platform there is nothing to be seen but a 
low table and a candle burning on each side of it. 
A narrator appears from behind the curtain on the 
back of the platform, and sits at the table on a 
cushion and makes a profound bow. Then he takes 
a sip of tea, stops the samisen playing by banging 
upon the table with two fans wrapped in leather ; 
he murmurs a courteous welcome to the audience, 
bows repeatedly, and, after snuffing the candles, 
proceeds with a story. The stories are chiefly 
humorous or witty until toward the end of the 
evening, when the abler men make their appearance 
and the tenor of the narrative insensibly takes on 
a serious aspect and a tragic interest. The comic 
stories invariably terminate with sprightly puns, 
the tragic in a spectacular representation of ghosts 
and spirits. An awful tale of murder, let us sup- 
pose, has been told in an impressive manner ; and 
while the imaginary murderer and the actual lis- 



GO A JAPANESE BOY. 

teners are seeing strange sights in fancy, the nar- 
rator unobserved turns down the lights and tum- 
bles off the platform. In the following darkness 
the ghosts stalk in a ray of pale light ; they are the 
story-tellers themselves in masks, and they some- 
times walk down the aisles to the terror of those 
that believe in them. I could not bear the roving- 
apparitions, — I was small indeed, — and took refuge 
in the lap of my elder companion, much as cer- 
tain birds hide their heads, and think themselves 
safe. No doubt such sights as these worked in my 
infant imagination, and roused in me that dread of 
darkness which is so common with the children of 
Japan. 

On fine days in spring our neighborhood went 
out en masse on excursion parties. They roamed 
about the warm green fields at will and gathered in 
hand-baskets, half dallying with the sunbeams, 
various kinds of wild herbs which are tender and 
edible, or they feasted in a charming nook under- 
neath the canopy of cherry blossoms. The pink 
petals of the full blown flowers, fanned by a gentle 
breath of wind, visited the merry-makers like 
snow-flakes ; a single flake occasionally happening 
to fall in the tiny earthen cup of sake, held up by 
one who stopped and talked or laughed just as 
he was putting it to his lips. The party was won- 
derfully pleased at that; if they were a poetical 
club or artistic coterie such little accidents perhaps 
elicited short rhythmical effusions from them, 
which they would pen on beautiful variegated 
cards expressly cut for the purpose. These would 
be tied to the drooping branches, that the next 



BY HIMSELF. 61 

party might pause to share in the sentiment of the 
present instance. More frequently, however, this 
is done to leave some token of the culture and re- 
finement of the clique, or to show off the individ- 
ual's finish of hand and elegance of expression. 
Vanity is at the bottom of it. 

We sat on the scarlet Chinese blanket, spread on 
the greensward ; wine made every heart buoyant ; 
the happy crew, by and by, sang, played the sami- 
sen and tripped "the light fantastic toe." In- 
deed, nothing could call us home, after such enjoy- 
ment of a beautiful day, but the reddening western 
sky and the falling shades of night. 

At Imabari we have an excellent public garden 
in the ruins of the old castle. In spring when all 
the cherry trees bloom in full force, the scene, sur- 
veyed at a distance, looks like the piles of white 
cloud in the blue summer sky. You must know 
the Japanese cultivate the cherry-tree not for its 
fruit, but for the beauty of its flowers. If the tree 
bears fruit, it is bitter to the taste, worse than 
your choke-cherries; nobody stops to pluck it. 
When past the height of blooming, the flowers 
begin to leave the boughs quietly; later they fall 
abundantly and quickly, and, alighting on the dirt 
below, cover it like a sheet of snow. Trite as this 
description may appear, it has yet a charm for me ; 
for the happy time I spent under those blossoms, 
in that mellow sun and that soft open air, steals 
back imperceptibly in my memory. 

In the centre of the garden stands a shrine of the 
Shinto gods. The entire ground is considerably 
elevated above the level of the surrounding regions, 



62 A JAPANESE BOY. 

and stone walls hem it in. A belt of deep ditches, 
which, in the warlike days of old, stemmed the rush 
of an invading army, girdles the base of the steep 
walls. The neglect of years, passed in peace, has 
left it in disrepair. To some of the trenches the 
ebb and flow of sea- water have still access, and 
swarms of big fish and little fish thrive unmo- 
lested, for none but the people that pay for the 
privilege are permitted to angle in these fish-ponds. 
There are also fresh-water moats; the beds of 
green pond-weeds and duck's meat closely patch 
the sluggish, dark-colored waters. Here grows the 
famous lotus plant of the East. It shoots up its 
broad umbrella-like leaves in summer, and on the 
stalks here and there among the leaves open the 
Buddhist's pure majestic flowers. 

Having heard that the buds unlock in an instant 
at early dawn with the noise of percussion, we, the 
curious, formed a little party for the purpose of 
investigating the truth of it. We arose a little 
after midnight, gathered together the pledged and 
groped our way in the dark ; we could scarcely dis- 
cern one another. By the time, however, we 
arrived at our destination, it was close upon day- 
break; a party at the further end of the bank 
showed darkly against the aurora of the eastern 
sky, for the country round was open and nothing 
stood between us and the sea. We kept vigil 
intently ; for my part I failed to observe any of the 
buds open; having watched a great many at the 
same time I really watched none. A clever person 
instructed me that my whole attention should be 
paid to a single bud ; for which reason I the next 



BY HIMSELF. 63 

time pitched upon one particular bud. I kept my 
eye on it all the morning, looking neither to the 
right nor to the left. I was once before provoked 
at a spiral bud of morning-glory in my garden, 
because it intentionally unfurled upon me when I 
was looking aside. Accordingly, I took especial 
care against such failure on my part ; but it all 
proved vain— the lotus bud was too young to blos- 
som! 

The flowers are very large ; white is the common 
color, but then there is a rare lovely pink shade. 
The plant bears edible fruit; the root, too, is 
counted a delicacy. By reason of the unknown 
depth of the black mud, wherein the roots lie hid- 
den, the plucking of them is very difficult; the 
men formerly held in contempt under the name of 
Etta dive in the mire and search for them. The 
prized article is seen, immersed in water, in gro- 
cery stores on sale ; no feast of any pretension is 
complete without it. When sliced crosswise the 
renkon (lotus root) shows about half-a-dozen 
symmetrical holes; the slices are boiled with the 
katsuwo and shoyu and are valued highly for 
toothsomeness. 

Some of the wide ditches were filled up from 
time to time; and in the places where fishes had 
frisked about or warriors tried to float a raft, 
farmers were now peacefully hoeing potatoes, or 
pumpkins basked their heads in the noontide sun. 
But the castle, being too colossal to be pulled down 
at once, remained entire for a long time, after the 
feudal system had been abolished and the Lord of 
Imabari summoned to Yedo. Unfortunately, how- 



64 A JAPANESE BOY. 

ever; the extensive underground powder magazine 
one morning caught a spark of fire, and all of a 
sudden the towers and palaces blew up with a tre- 
mendous explosion. At that period the Japanese 
apprehended the possible invasion of the "red- 
haired devils," the foreigners; for which reason it 
was not to be wondered at that the patriotic citi- 
zens of Imabari mistook the earth-rending roar 
and the heavy ascending columns of smoke in the 
direction of the old stronghold for a cannonade of 
enemies. The panic it produced in town struck 
terror into everybody's heart; the weak and ner- 
vous fell into fits. A drizzling rain since the pre- 
vious eve rendered the streets excessively wet. 
Splashing in the mud and puddles, the heroic of 
the townsmen, with the loose dangling skirt of the 
Japanese garment tucked up through the belt for 
action, hurried castleward with the utmost speed, 
with unsheathed spear and sword in hand, to the 
great consternation of the astounded populace. I 
was scarcely of an age to comprehend the dire 
calamity, yet the scene impressed me indelibly. 
Soon the vision of foreign hairy invaders vanished ; 
the people saw that it was a sheer accident, fearful 
as it was ; but in that ancient lax administration 
behind the screen of cruel rigidity, the real cause 
of it has never been thoroughly investigated. 
Lives were lost in the disaster, for a multitude 
of servants still lived in the castle. Mutilated 
limbs and bodies were subsequently picked up in 
abundance from the surrounding moats ; the feat- 
ures of many were too badly marred for identifica- 
tion; and as to the severed limbs no one could 



BY HIMSELF. (55 

tell which belonged to which of the shattered 
trunks. 

The remaining half -burned buildings have since 
been destroyed piecemeal ; all that now remains of 
the proud castle is the innermost circle of masonry, 
which cannot so easily be leveled to the ground. 
It is not provided with a railing, and in looking 
down the steep one feels his heart stand still. The 
vast prospect it commands, extending far beyond 
the town limits, is superb. A. man taking the path 
directly below the wall appears no bigger than a 
dot. 

Since I have begun a long story about this grand 
ruin, give me leave to recount a tradition in con- 
nection with it. Back in the dark ages the super- 
stitious belief existed in Japan, that in building a 
castle, to secure the firmness of its foundation a 
human life should be sacrificed. Usually a person 
was buried alive beneath one of the walls; some 
declare the efficacy nullified unless the victim be 
taken in unawares. The chronicle says, that in 
conformity to the above belief when the tmabari 
castle, was being raised a horrible homicide had 
been committed. At first the authorities were 
much at a loss in the choice of a proper offering. 
One day a poor, decrepit old woman, either 
prompted by curiosity or to beg money of the men, 
approached the work ; little did she dream her life 
was in peril ; in an instant a sagacious magistrate 
solved the problem. The signal nod from him, 
and the castle-builders fell upon the crone and, 
amid her screams, struggles, entreaties, stoned her 
to the earth. Henceforward, it is said, in the dead 
5 



66 A JAPANESE BOY. 

silence of the castle at night a faint, pitiful cry, 
now drowned in the soughing storm outside, now 
audible in the dreadful pause, echoes from under 
the ground. I had the precise spot pointed out to 
me; it lies in the centre of all the outlying 
bulwarks ; in passing it I always felt a thrill steal 
through me, and turned that corner at a greater 
angle than I would an ordinary corner, with the 
intention of keeping my feet off the buried bones. 

In those tyrannical days of feudalism the samu- 
rais presumed much upon the commoners of the 
town. They not only laid claim wrongly to their 
personal property, but also regarded their lives as 
of no importance. The samurai always carried 
two swords by his side, one long and one short, to 
arbitrate right and wrong in altercations. Blades 
tempered by certain smiths were particularly 
esteemed ; and in order to test the cutting edge, he 
would lie in wait nightly at a street corner for a 
victim. An innocent passer-by was ferociously 
attacked and, unless he could defend himself, was 
wantonly slain. Such outrages actually occurred 
in places ; people, forthwith, seldom stirred abroad 
nights. Heaven be thanked, those savage times 
are gone forever ; the street-lamps light every nook 
and corner, and the police guard the safety of the 
citizen, 



BY HIMSELF. 67 



CHAPTER VIII. 

My mother is fond of parties and young people 
and their keen appreciation of pleasure ; my father 
is of a far different turn of mind ; he has his happi- 
est moments in smoking leisurely, in manipulating 
the fishing-rod and line, under the shielding pine- 
tree, by some quiet river-bank, or in hunting out 
edible mushrooms in the mountains. He is a 
respectable, practical Izaak Walton; quaint rip- 
ples of smile pass across his face as the nibbling 
fish gives his line a tantalizing pull ; he helps me 
bait, he teaches me when and how to make sure of 
my spoil, — for many a victim hangs to the hook 
just long enough to rise out of water, glitters 
transiently in the sun and thrills one with joy, 
and then decides, undeceived, to reject the dainty 
morsel : there rises an ever widening, ever reced- 
ing circle on the still liquid surface, a golden flap 
of the tail, and the fish is invisible, leaving one 
despondent. I liked mother's and sisters' com- 
pany, but also appreciated father's soothing, restful 
influence. At the simple repast in the open soli- 
tary scene of the field and stream, after angling all 
the morning, he said little ; yet the expression of 
calm enjoyment and honest humor on his face 
brightened his companion. Those were delightful 



68 A JAPANESE BOY. 

times; I have the scene at this moment before 
my mental eye : — the broad beach of white sand 
surrounding the cove, where the river meets the 
sea, with a lonely stork standing on one leg in 
shallow water ; the briny odor from the sea, and 
the fresh scent from the meadow; the sighing 
pines overhead and the turbulent water at the 
stone abutments of the bridge; the sunny blue 
sea beyond the sand-bar, studded with white sails ; 
a huge cloud of smoke swaying landward, rising 
from the distant brick-yard; and in the grayish- 
blue background the silhouette of a grove and 
knoll, whereon a wayside shrine stands. 

"See what you can do about here," says my 
father, taking in his line, " I shall follow the river 
up and find if they bite." He turns his back and 
disappears and reappears among the scrub oaks 
and stunted willows that fringe the margin. I 
stay where I am like a good son; but being no 
more successful than before, and bored and wish- 
ing company, after a reasonable lapse of time, I 
find myself going after my father. Upon finding 
him quietly seated under some protruding tree, 
beneath whose mirrored branches and near whose 
knotty root the water darkens in a pool, I inquire 
into his success. "No, nothing marvelous," he 
responds gently, gazing dreamily across the river, 
yet wary with the fish that "cometh as a thief in 
the night." I take the liberty of lifting the lid of 
his basket and peep at the contents ; a large trout 
disturbed by the jar I gave it, snaps violently — I 
let down the lid instantly at that— and then it lies 
exhausted, working its jaw in anguish for water. 



JBY HIMSELF. 69 

" Cast your fly and try your luck," says my excel- 
lent father. Of course I obey him ; and although 
I was not so successful every time as he, yet could 
not always help observing privately that the loca- 
tion he had selected was a good fishing hole. 

The river I have in mind has a characteristic 
oriental appellation given it — Dragon-fire. It is a 
small stream at a short distance from the town of 
Imabari, having its fountain-heads in the valleys of 
the mountains visible from the mouth. There is 
nothing remarkable about this water-course, ex- 
cept a popular belief that, on the eve of a festal 
day in honor of the temple situated on one of the 
mountains, a mysterious fire rises from the 
enchanting " dragon-palace " in the depths of the 
ocean, where a beautiful queen reigns supreme 
over her charming watery world with its finny 
and scaly subjects of various species. The myste- 
rious light, casting an inverted image on the water, 
moves steadily up the river, under the concen- 
trated gaze of thousands who climb the height 
partly as devotees but mostly as spectators, until 
it reaches a massive stone lantern erected upon 
the ledge of an immense cliff. There it vanishes 
as strangely as it appeared ; and instead the lantern, 
hitherto dark, lights up suddenly. 

I dislike to question the reality of this astonish- 
ing phenomenon, or try to explain it with my 
superficial knowledge of physics. A very pious, 
gracious old lady in our neighborhood had always 
a ready listener in me in her superstitious talks 
concerning the wonders and charitable doings of 
the Goddess of Mercy, whom she had imposingly 



?0 A JAPANESE BOY. 

enshrined in her apartment and adored unceas- 
ingly. Perhaps you would wish to know what the 
goddess looked like. Well, it was a small bronze 
statuette in a gilded miniature temple ; she wore a 
scanty Hindoo costume, a halo around her head 
and an expression gentle, sweet, serene, godly. — 
You have seen a reproduction of the ideal Italian 
picture of Christ, with downcast eyes and a look of 
meek submission, benign tenderness and forgive- 
ness : the Goddess of Mercy seemed quite like that 
but with slightly more authority. Another con- 
ception of the pagan goddess, which I have seen 
elsewhere, represents her as possessing countless 
arms, signifying, I imagine, the countless deeds of 
mercy she achieves for mankind. 

The good old lady did not feel satisfied with 
the home worship; she must play the pilgrim, 
in spite of years and infirmities, and visit, at 
least, the nearest public temples. So she set 
off with her company, a circle of aged zealots 
like herself, on a journey to a sacred edifice stand- 
ing somewhere in the mountain which, in fair 
weather, shows faintly against the sky west of 
Imabari, towering far above hills and heights of 
nearer distances. The way is long and tedious 
and lies through rocky regions. Difficult passes 
and precipitous declivities were left far behind by 
assiduous traveling on foot ; but the party lost the 
way, wandered into mountain wilds, silent and 
sublime, far, far from home or any human habi- 
tation ; and there was nothing to be heard but the 
flocks of rooks cawing inauspiciously among 
the tree-tops. The day advanced rapidly ; the sun 



\ 

\ 



BY HIMSELF. 71 

wheeled down without tarrying, and in the track- 
less forest the evening gloom gathered early. 
Mute admiration, commingled with despair, seized 
the travelers as they surveyed the forest grandeur 
in its twilight robe. The unpruned trees thrust 
out dry broken arms from near the roots; the 
leaves sere and sodden covered the damp, black 
soil ankle deep rustling under the tread. 

The sunset, how glorious! Our travelers threw 
down their walking-sticks, stretched out their tired 
limbs and, seated on rocks, spell-bound, gave them- 
selves up to the contemplation of the magnificent 
fire-painting in the western firmament. Behold 
the mountains of living coal, the lakes of molten 
gold, the islands of floating amber, all irregularly 
shaped as by a wild genius, distributed not as on 
the earth's surface, — a mountainous pile super-im- 
posed on a lake with a stratum of sapphire between ! 
At length, the whole melted into one grand univer- 
sal conflagration ; the undulating tops of the dis- 
tant mountain-chain- appeared boldly against the 
horizon; the- needles and cones of a pine branch, 
pendant near by in the line of vision, depicted 
themselves sharply on the canvas of crimson 
splendor. 

Insensibly to our musing friends, however, the 
red sinking disc finally departed by the western 
portal, the after-glow died away slowly ; and when 
they awoke from reveries and heaved a sigh, the 
question of what to be done came pressing upon 
them. Now the day being over, there was the 
danger of wild animals in the woods. That could 
be averted by building a bright fire, but what was 



72 A JAPANESE BOY. 

to be done for hunger which began to assert itself 
strongly? With energy gone and darkness and 
peril thickening about them, yet trusting in the 
Goddess, the lonely pilgrims peered around for a 
less exposed spot to nestle in. In this their search, 
miraculously they came upon what to them looked 
like a cottage. It was one of the hovels hastily 
put up with twigs and shrubs by hunters, where 
they waylay the boar at night and in snow, and 
where they slice meat, lie by the fire and smoke, 
and frequently hold a midnight revel over their 
fat game. Our weary, almost famished tourists 
entered it, wondering and looking around at each 
step ; they were at once struck with the snug ap- 
pearance of the interior. There was a heap of 
ashes, which when disturbed disclosed a few glow- 
ing embers ; and in a corner was piled on raw hide 
plenty of excellent venison. The hunters must 
have left not long since. 

The pious old lady goes on to tell that such a 
thing as this could not have been otherwise than 
by the dispensation of her merciful Goddess, and 
that she and her fellow believers fell immediately 
on their knees to express their heart-felt gratitude 
for her munificence and protection. The fire was 
rekindled and fed with armfuls of the dried leaves 
and dead branches that lay strewn plentifully 
around ; the broad blaze cast an illusive cheerful- 
ness on objects standing near; each time a stick 
was thrown in the cloven tongues of the fire 
emitted sparks, which died in their flight among 
the masses of the overhanging foliage. Taken in 
connection with the surrounding scene, there was 



BY HIMSELF. 73 

something inexpressibly wild and primitive about 
the open fire. The party appeased their hunger 
and waited the return of the proprietors of the 
rude cottage. They did not come, though the 
night advanced far; some of the pilgrims were 
extremely fatigued and dropped to sleep in the 
warmth, others sat up resolutely, repeating pray- 
ers and counting the beads before a pocket image 
of the Goddess. The low night wind bore to their 
ear, at intervals, the concert of wolves howling in 
dismal, forlorn cadence; and they were now and 
then started by one of these savage marauders ap- 
pearing in their sight at a safe distance. 

The night was passed in this way, and the dawn 
came; but how to find the right path? While 
they were in despair and supplicating aid from the 
Goddess, one of them descried a figure on the brow 
of an eminence not far distant. It seemed, on 
nearer approach, to be a venerable mountain sire ; 
his long silver- white beard flowed down his breast ; 
a pair of clear beaming eyes twinkled beneath his 
great shaggy eyebrows. Being asked in which 
point of the compass lay the road to the temple, he 
slowly lifted his cane, a knotty stem of a shrub 
called akaza, and indicated the west. Apropos of 
this, the akaza stick is believed to be carried by an 
imaginary race of men hidden in China's pathless 
woods and mountains, who are without exception 
very old but never overtaken by disease or death 
and live in serene felicity, gathering medicinal 
herbs, writing on scrolls and in company with 
cranes and tortoises. In kakemonoes (wall hang- 
ings) they are sometimes depicted as taking a 



74 A JAPANESE BOY. 

literal " flying " visit on craneback, with the 
inevitable scroll in hand, to their brother sennin's 
(sennin is the name this happy race goes by) grotto 
in a neighboring hill or dale. 

Our party of wanderers thanked the kind but 
dignified old man on their hands and knees and 
raised their heads, when he seemed to dissolve 
away from view in a most singular manner. This 
opportune guide, according to my garrulous lady, 
is a messenger sent by her thousand-armed God- 
dess to their help ; in fine, not a thing occurs but is 
ordained by Kwannon the Merciful. The story of 
the adventure was wound up with the safe arrival 
in the Ewannon temple, and fervent piety kindled 
at the altar. 



BY HIMSELF. ?5 



CHAPTER IX. 

I am afraid I have told a long prosaic story in 
the previous chapter, and betrayed a school-boy- 
like delight for the bombastic in the description of 
the sunset, etc. No one detests more than I any 
thing that smacks of the young misses' poetry. 
Come, let us inquire, more relevantly to our pur- 
pose, what constituted my childish happiness, sor- 
row, fear and other kindred feelings in Japan. 

The greatest fear I can yet recall was the ordeal 
of the yaito. This is a Japanese domestic art of 
healing and averting diseases, especially those of 
children. The moxa, being made into numerous 
tiny cones and placed on certain spots on the back, 
is lighted with the senko already described. Im- 
agine how you feel when the flesh is being burnt ; 
I used to hold out stoutly against the cruel opera- 
tion — would you not sympathize with me ? If I 
had any presentiment of it, I would slip away and 
keep from home till I became desirous of dinner. 
No sooner had I crossed the paternal threshold than 
I was made a prisoner ; and ailment or no ailment, 
my severe father and mother insisted upon my 
having the yaito once in so often. Great was my 
demonstration of agony when father held me still 
and mother proceeded to burn my bare back ; a 



76 A JAPANESE BOY. 

promise of bonbons, which reconciled me to almost 
anything ordinarily, did not work in this one in- 
stance ; I cried myself hoarse (keeping it up even 
while there was no pain) and kicked frantically. 
"The storm is over," mother used to say with con- 
siderable relief, when the trial drew to a close ; she 
hated the torture as much as anybody, but she had 
the welfare of her child at heart. Ah, gentle 
mother, if I had only understood you then as I do 
now I should certainly not have snapped so terribly. 
I remember, after twenty -four to forty-eight hours 
the blisters began to swell and chafed painfully 
against the clothing, and had to be punctured to 
let out the serum. As a matter of fact, the yaito 
did cure slight general and local ailments : once I 
had a blood-shot eye, and mother sent me to a 
worthy old woman in town who knew how to cure 
it by means of yaito. After much pressing with 
fingers, she hit at the vital point in the back and 
marked it with a generous dip of india ink. Upon 
returning home, it was burnt deeply with moxa ; 
and miraculously enough the eye got well immedi- 
ately. I am inclined to think the cautery acts 
through the nerves. Now for years have I been 
exempt from the operation, yet to this day on my 
back are symmetrically branded the star-like me- 
morials of my mother's love. 

Speaking of the old woman I am reminded of 
another whom I was in the habit of looking upon as 
a sort of witch. Her eye, with the crow's foot at the 
outer corner and, I fancied, with the pupil in a 
longitudinal slit like that of grimalkin, the creature 
nearest to witches and warlocks; her fetich, the 



BY HIMSELF. 77 

image of a human monkey, to whom she was a sort 
of vestal virgin ; her place of abode remote from 
town and isolated from other farm-houses, present- 
ing a queer combination of a rustic home and a 
sacred shrine ; these made my childish imagination 
invest her with an air of mystery. She was wont 
to come to town in trim, made-over clothes re-dyed 
and starched, with the slant overlapping Japanese 
collars adjusted nicely; in the setta (slipper-san- 
dals, much liked by aged people for their ease and 
safety compared with the high clogs); with her 
gray-streaked black hair combed tightly up, glossy 
with a superabundance of pomatum and done up in 
a coiffure bespeaking her age ; walking firmly, with 
a small portable shrine on her back wrapt in the 
furoshiki (wide cloth for carrying things about) 
and tied around her shoulders. People sent for her 
to exorcise their houses, particularly when there 
happened to be sick persons in them, consulted her 
in selecting the site for a new building and in sink- 
ing the well, in order not to draw upon their heads 
the vengeance of a displeased spirit. On some oc- 
casions our household required her assistance; I 
went the long distance through the open fields to 
her residence ; and when she came she let down the 
shrine from her back, placed it against the wall in 
our sitting-room and, opening reverentially the 
hinge-doors, proceeded to pray. What for, I don't 
remember, I was too intent upon her manners to 
inquire into her purpose. 

Of quite another stamp was Aunt Otsune (so 
everybody called her), housekeeper to the prosper- 
ous candy dealer just opposite us on Main street. 



78 A JAPANESE BOY. 

Ready with tears for any sad news ; sympathetic 
in the extreme; beaming, radiant, full of happy 
smiles in beholding her friends— methinks I see 
her snatch me from my nurse's arms, fondle me to 
her bosom and press her withered cheek against 
my fat one, uttering some such very encouraging 
ejaculation as "My precious dear!" She did not 
kiss me, I am very certain, for we don't have kiss- 
ing. And she must have many a time dropped her 
work to admire my holiday garment; I know I 
toddled some of my early experimental steps in 
journeys to Aunty, trailing behind me the free 
ends of my sash ; and as I became confident of my- 
self, I became ambitious and dragged my father's 
or brother's clogs, a world too big for my feet. O 
how good Aunty was! She would fill both my 
hands with the candies that were being prepared in 
the back of the store near the kitchen and bid me 
run home and show them to mamma. The best 
thing she was in the habit of bestowing upon me was 
— I don't know what to call it ; it was the burnt bot- 
tom portion of the rice she had cooked for all hands 
of the store in a prodigious vessel, loosened in broad 
pieces and folded about the an. The an is (this 
necessity of definition upon definition cautions me 
against touching on many a thing peculiarly Jap- 
anese) the an is a red bean deprived of its skin and 
mashed with sugar; it forms the core of various 
comfits. O how I relished this Aunty's homely, 
warm, sweet concoction ! It was not intended for 
sale, therefore we cared little about its appearance, 
were it only good to taste. She made it so large 
sometimes that I had to hold it with both my small 



BY HIMSELF. 79 

hands. I munched away at it, whilst she scraped 
the great vessel ; and it was sometime before each 
of us could finish our huge tasks. I well recall the 
flickering rush-light under which Aunty worked ; 
the sense of satisfaction I experienced in my agree- 
able occupation in my corner; the harsh grating 
noise of fhe steel scraper against the bottom of the 
iron vessel; the obscurity round about the sink a 
short way off ; and the invisible rascals of mice hold- 
ing high festivity over cast-off viands, chasing each 
other, biting one another's tails and screeching 
at the pain. My family endeavored to keep me 
at home, for it certainly is not in good taste to 
have one's child running off to a neighbor's 
kitchen; but Aunty would steal me from mamma, 
and I, for my part, did all I could, I warrant, to be 
stolen ! 

When we are well-nigh through our business, 
Aunty, happening to glance at me to assure her- 
self I am there though silent, breaks into a broad, 
good-humored smile at the sight. Here I am with 
the an smeared about my mouth, and stretching- 
out my hands equally sticky, in a most comic des- 
pairing attitude. What I implore in mute eloquence 
is this, that she would please to take immediate 
care of my soiled hands and wipe off the material 
about my mouth. Aunty stands a minute appre- 
ciating the humorous effect so produced ; I look up 
at her with unsuspecting eyes wide open and licking 
my mouth occasionally by way of variation. Soon, 
however, my good-hearted Aunty washes me nice 
and clean and taking me up with her hands on my 
sides, throws me on her right shoulder and crosses 



80 A JAPANESE BOY. 

over to the opposite side of the street in short 
quick steps to our house. She is always a welcome 
guest there and is at once surrounded by our 
women, to whom she imparts her kitchen lore and 
latest bits of news about men and things. 

She had a little romance in her kitchen, which 
she helped along and she took absorbing interest in 
its development. It was the mutual attachment 
of the adopted daughter of the great candy manu- 
facturer and one of his men. Miss Chrysanthe- 
mum, to give a glimpse of her past history, was 
born in a humble home and, being a burden to its 
inmates, was thrust upon Mr. Gladness the Main 
street confectioner, who was. immensely wealthy, 
and invested for pleasure in peacocks, canary birds, 
white, long-eared, pink-eyed, lovely, tame rabbits, 
valuable pot-plants and many other good things. 
I received beautiful peacock feathers from him; 
but my sisters did not -wish them for their bonnets, 
because Japanese ladies do not wear bonnets. (But 
I don't know, of course, as I am a man and a for- 
eigner, that ladies ever trim their bonnets with the 
gay peacock feathers.) And when the peacocks 
died, Mr. Gladness (his Japanese equivalent means 
it) caused them to be stuffed and surprised me and 
many others one day with the dead but life-like 
peacocks in the cage. I went to see Mr. Gladness 
often; Mr. Gladness was a very rich, important 
gentleman ; Mr. Gladness was good enough to me, 
though older people did not seem to love him as I 
did ; he let me see the rabbits eat bamboo-leaves. 
He said I might touch them if I liked. I was very 
much afraid at first, but Mr, Gladness assured me 



BY HIMSELF. 81 

they wouldn't bite — honestly they wouldn't. So I 
ventured to put out my hand. They limped away 
from me though, keeping their noses going all the 
time. Don't you know how they twitch their 
noses? Japanese rabbits do that too; I thought it 
was funny ! Mr. Gladness had in his yard a large 
pond, where he kept a lot of big goldfish; Mr. 
Gladness had also in his beautiful yard a little 
mountain and a little stream with a little bridge. 
Mr. Gladness had a great many servants; every- 
body, bowing, said "yea, yea "to him, while he 
stood straight as an arrow. 

Miss Chrysanthemum, as I was saying, came, or 
rather was brought to this rich merchant's house, 
he having found her one cold morning at his door, 
tucked nicely in a basket, like little Moses. Her 
poor dear mother, like his mother, some have said, 
was watching from a hiding place ; the anxiety of 
a mother seems the same both in ancient and mod- 
ern times and all the world over. Now the rich 
man had no child, just as in stories ; and when the 
crying baby stopped and smiled at him through 
her tears, his proud old heart felt infinitely tender. 
He adopted her at that instant and christened her 
afterward Chrysanthemum, the flower of that 
name being his favorite above all others in his 
garden. 

These particulars I gleaned from the neighbors' 
social gossip after I had grown up ; Miss Chrysan- 
themum was already a young lady when I used to 
go to Aunt Otsune in childish adoration. I remem- 
ber the young lady took me one winter's evening 
beside her to the kotatsu, the heating apparatus I 
6 



82 A JAPANESE BOY. 

have mentioned in connection with my grand- 
father's house, and told me stories. She was reared 
in luxury, had everything she wanted that could 
be gotten with money, and was a great pet of 
Aunty's, who regarded her as her own child. It 
was not surprising, then, that Aunty should note 
with deep satisfaction the gentle flutter of Miss 
Chrysanthemum's maiden heart at the sight of a 
young man ; indeed, she seemed in the eye of the 
world to take more interest than the interested par- 
ties themselves. This kitchen romance was the 
pervading theme of her conversation ; we were in 
duty bound to hear just how the matter stood be- 
tween the two, with her opinions as to the pros- 
pect. The whole town took it up and discussed it 
variously; some sage persons shook their heads 
and intimated that they knew a certain poor fisher- 
woman to be Miss Chrysanthemum's real mother, 
and that they had all along their own misgivings 
concerning the young lady's future. "The blood 
will tell " was the maxim on which these sapient ob- 
servers took their stand, and they talked the young 
man over as if he were an arrant fortune hunter, 
when I fear not one of them could come up to Mr. 
Prosperity in assiduity and honest labor. " The 
blood will tell," indeed, that a daughter of a friend- 
less, mistaken, but upright woman should choose 
for herself a sensible man, one who will stick to 
her through thick and thin, as we shall see 
presently. 

As I am not writing a love story, I shall not give 
the personal appearances of my fair Chrysanthe- 
mum and gentle Prosperity, nor their sayings and 



BY HIMSELF. 83 

doings. Yet I do see perfectly, even at this dis- 
tance of time and place, the picture of young Mr. 
Prosperity sitting with his fellow workers at his 
work, in the workshop on the rear of the store, 
under the same roof with the kitchen but with a 
hall-way between. Perhaps he is putting a color 
on the sugared commodities ; he does it with a flat 
brush, taking up the pieces one by one, then he 
sends a box of them to the next man, who goes over 
the same, staining the uncolored portion with 
another tint. He looks up at my approach, 
smiles a welcome and resumes the work; the 
others, being used to my coming, go on with their 
job, without even taking as much trouble as the 
mere act of raising their heads, saying indiffer- 
ently " halloo ! " to their busy hands. Mr. Prosper- 
ity, I remember, gave me some of the candy he 
was making when he found an opportunity, which 
went farther to form my good opinion of him than 
any other act. 

Everything went on pleasantly with the young 
people and Aunty— very pleasantly, in fact, until 
the pleasure of the old gentleman came to be con- 
sulted. Then arose an insurmountable difficulty ; 
he would not hear of the match; he possessed 
wealth and in consequence proved supercilious. 
His wealth, however, was but recently acquired ; he 
himself was once a common workman in a candy 
store on the fourth block of the same street. But 
he would not have anything said about it ; he sim- 
ply would not brook the idea of giving his daughter 
in marriage to his employee ; he foolishly deemed 
it below his dignity. This was a severe blow 



84 A JAPANESE BOY. 

to Aunt Otsune; she felt her career balked and 
frustrated; the young couple began to love each 
other much more than before. " What 'would this 
state of things result in? " said the gossips of the 
town. Reconciliation of the huffy old man, impos- 
sible ! Separation of the affectionate pair, quite as 
hard! 

Here Aunt Otsune called in her inventive powers ; 
she was full of kind honest invention, — how else 
could she have carried herself in the battle of life 
so far, single handed, and remain a favorite with 
all the world? She took Miss Chrysanthemum 
and Mr. Prosperity under her wing, as it were, 
rented a comfortable little house on a by-street and 
installed them therein, married. She liked to see 
them happy together, and have them take care of 
her in her old age ; she had heretofore been lone 
and helpless, despite her cheerful exertions. They 
opened a small candy store, falling back upon their 
knowledge of the trade ; soon there came to them a 
dear little babe. Aunt Otsune rejoiced at the little 
one's advent ; her scheme was now complete. She 
bore the infant in her arms softly and went to the 
door of her former employer. Her diplomacy was 
to give the cross old fellow a sight of the lovely 
grandchild and thereby work a miracle in his 
stony heart, surmising at the same time that time 
must have done something towards mollifying his 
obstinacy. This accomplished, it would be an easy 
step to persuade him to take them all back into his 
favor. Alas, poor faithful soul! it was but a 
woman's wisdom; Mr. Gladness was still found 
inexorable. 



BY HIMSELF. 85 

On that memorable night slowly she walked into 
our house with the babe in her arms, and sat her- 
self down heavily by the dim, papered Japanese 
household lamp. For some time she remained 
silent and glanced around the room furtively ; to 
her unspeakable satisfaction there was nobody 
there beside ourselves. Then the mental tension 
with which she upheld the whole weight of misery 
and woe gave way, and she burst into a flood of 
tears. I recollect the unusual solemn hush of the 
room, the serious looks of the company and the 
distracting sobs on the other side of the lamp ; I 
recollect my becoming unaccountably sad, too, 
and looking away at a corner in my effort to 
refrain from tears ; I beheld the paper god pasted 
high up on the pillar brown with age and smoke. 
When Aunty recovered herself, she managed to 
inform us how she had been received by Mr. Glad- 
ness and told us she had made up her mind, if the 
young people were willing, to move to one of the 
islands in the Sound where she was sure of a kind- 
lier reception. So the kind old soul, foiled in the 
last of her struggles, left her friends at Imabari for 
the simple life of the islanders. At intervals, we 
had intelligence of her whereabouts, but as years 
rolled on news reached us no more. 

I have given this account of Aunt Otsune some- 
what at length, because I felt interested in reviv- 
ing her half -forgotten memory ; and I have entered 
upon the history of Miss Chrysanthemum and Mr. 
Prosperity in order to show to the people of this 
country, who are misinformed on the subject of 
Japanese marriage and believe that our young peo- 



86 A JAPANESE BOY. 

pie are, in all cases, matched by their parents and 
not infrequently to those whom they do not love, — 
in order to show, I say, to these misinformed 
people by an actual example from my own obser- 
vation, that such is not the case, and that our 
people marry for love of each other, notwithstand- 
ing the artificial manners of our society. 



BY HIMSELF. 87 



CHAPTER X. 

I was generally happy in my childish days in 
Japan. I cannot put my finger on any particular 
thing as my chief happiness, but I think holidays 
made me as happy as anything. We have a num- 
ber of holidays, among which the first and the 
greatest is New Year's Day. 

The first three days of January ! I shall never 
forget them. But like most celebrations New Year 
pleasure must be chiefly felt in a few preparatory 
days. In Japan full vigor is preserved among chil- 
dren for Happy New Year ; here in America Merry 
Christmas, with its Santa Claus and his stocking- 
ful of presents, takes away the zest from children 
before New Year comes. The merriment of the 
season is materially heightened by the making of 
the mochi. The mochi, which I have referred to 
once before, is a glutinous cake made of rice ; it is 
as peculiarly indispensable in the New Year feast 
as is turkey in the New England Thanksgiving din- 
ner. It is generally no larger than a man's palm, 
therefore one family makes a great number of 
them. Many are stuffed with the an. The an is 
not necessarily sweet ; some people like it flavored 
with salt. A large number of the mochis are not 
stuffed; they are suffered to dry and harden, so 



gg A JAPANESE BOY. 

that they can be stored away for future enjoy- 
ment. At any time during the year you may get 
them out and steam or toast them. In our town 
there are men who make it their business to visit 
houses and help them in mochi-making. Just 
before New Year the professional mochi-makers 
work hard day after day. They could not always 
come in the daytime and made arrangements to 
visit us in the early morning. Then my sisters 
and I could hardly go to sleep in the great antici- 
pation of joy. When the morning came, our 
house was thrown open, illuminated (for it was 
yet dark) brightly and cheerfully, and the whole 
household were up doing something with willing 
hand and heart. I cannot describe how happy I 
was in this scene. I tried, half in play, to help 
them and got in everybody's way. You know 
the holiday feelings are very difficult to reproduce 
with pen and ink. 

Along the house on the street the men arranged 
a row of small earthen cooking stoves, which they 
had brought with them, each carrying two. The 
mode of carrying in this case, as well as in the 
transportation of any heavy load, is to use the 
shoulder as fulcrum and, laying on it an elastic 
wooden pole from whose ends hangs the burden, 
walk in steady balance, presenting the appearance 
of a pair of scales. Over the stoves were placed 
vessels of boiling water, over the vessels tubs with 
holes in the bottom and straw covers on top, in the 
vessels were heaps of rice washed perfectly white. 
The rice used in mochi-making is different from 
ordinary dinner rice; it is more glutinous when 



BY HIMSELF. 89 

cooked and easily made into paste ; it is a distinct 
variety selected in the beginning for the express 
purpose. The stoves are short hollow cylinders, 
open at the top and in the front ; the top receives 
the bottom of the vessel, and the front opening or 
mouth ejects smoke and allows the feeding of fuel. 
They seemed on this occasion to blaze more 
brightly; we children went out and watched the 
dancing flames; they made our faces glow with 
their reflection. 

When the rice was steamed long enough, it was 
transferred and made into paste in an utensil, like 
which I have seen nothing in this country. It is 
simply a stout trunk of a felled tree a few feet 
in height with its upper end scooped out. With it 
is a cylindrical block with a handle, a sort of 
pestle to press and strike upon the steamed rice. 
There was something joyous about the dull 
thumps when heard in the neighborhood, perhaps 
not to a foreign ear but to one brought up amongst 
customs associated with New Year holidays. And 
never at other times was our house so overflowing 
with hilarity as at this climax of domestic enjoy- 
ment. When the rice lost its granular appearance 
and became a uniform sticky mass, then it was 
placed upon a large board spread with rice flour. 
There it lay steaming, milk-white, this luxury of 
New Year, — luxurious even to the touch! The 
entire household flocked around it and made 
numerous round cakes. While our hands were 
busy, we interchanged many innocent jokes and 
merry laughs ; the old people gave in to our sway, 
displaying a quiet humor in their looks. 



90 A JAPANESE BOY. 

We set up the New Year tree. It is a drooping 
willow tree thickly studded with rice-paste and 
hung with ornate cotton balls, painted cards, etc. 
Throughout the month of January it is to be seen 
in the parlor of every house nailed against the 
wall. 

After nightfall on the last day of the old year a 
curious ceremony is performed. The worthy head 
of the family goes the round of his house with a 
box jQf hard burnt beans. Within every chamber 
he stands upright and throws a handful of the 
same, exclaiming at the top of his voice, — "Wel- 
come Good Luck ! Away with the Devil ! " Now, 
the box used provisionally for a receptacle is a 
rice measure called masu, which sounds like the 
verb meaning increase ; and the beans are mame, 
which is the same as the noun meaning health, 
although written and accented differently. Put- 
ting them together we have a supplication in a 
play upon words, — "Increase health," or "May 
health increase ! " Odd and fantastic as the 
notion appears, however, it is a hallowed custom 
and scrupulously observed. My father formerly 
performed the ceremony in our house; but when 
my eldest brother had grown up, he was assigned to 
the office, which he discharged with a comic grav- 
ity that I cannot forget. 

The Japanese looks upon certain periods— I for- 
get which — of his life as evil years. To avert hover- 
ing ill influences or to " drop " the years as they put 
it, the people take of the beans as many as their 
years, put them in paper bags together with a few 
pence and drop them at some cross-roads, taking 



BT HIMSELF. 91 

care not to be seen. In this manner I have drop- 
ped several of my earlier bad years ; I should have 
been wrecked a long time since, for life, but for 
the bags of beans ! 

In the same evening tradesmen desire to collect 
old bills and clear up the accounts of the passing 
year ; and in order to do it they call at the houses 
of their debtors, lighting their way with lanterns 
which bear the signs of their commercial establish- 
ments. So general is this idea, and so customary 
has this proceeding become in time, that everybody 
expects it as a matter of course at the end of each 
year; debtors, too, are easily dunned. A conse- 
quence is one of the grandest displays of lanterns. 
What a delight it was to me to stand before my 
house and watch the countless lights move up 
and down the street! When I was older I was 
appointed lantern-bearer before the collector for 
my father, who instructed his man to give me 
points, incidentally, in business. 

The next morning dawns, and the first day of 
the New Year is with us. Everybody seems 
happy, kind-hearted and filled with better feelings. 
Shopping housewives, grocers and hucksters of all 
sorts of holiday market goods have disappeared 
from the streets ; the change is like that of Sunday 
morning from Saturday afternoon in an American 
city. All the houses are carefully swept and put 
in good order, and the people have on their best 
apparel. A kind of arch is erected in front of 
each dwelling. But it is not round, it is square. 
Two young pine trees are planted for the pillars, 
and cross-pieces of green bamboo are tied to them. 



92 A JAPANESE BOY. 

On this frame- work are placed the traditional sim- 
ple ornaments; straw fringes, sea- weeds, ferns, a 
red lobster-shell, a lemon, dried persimmons, dried 
sardines and charcoal. These articles stand for 
many auspicious ideas ; reflect a moment and they 
will come home clear to your mind. The pines, 
bamboos, sea- weeds and ferns are evergreens, fit 
emblems of constancy ; the straw fringes are for 
excluding evil agencies— the lamb's blood on the 
door ; the lobster by its bent form is indicative of 
old age or long life; the lemon is dai-dai — "genera- 
tion after generation ; " the dried persimmons are 
sweets long and well preserved ; the sardines from 
their always swimming in a swarm denote the 
wish for a large family; and lastly, the stick of 
charcoal is an imperishable substance. 

When the morning sun rises gloriously or snow- 
flakes happen to fall (for we have snow in Japan), 
children leap out from under the arches, salute one 
another and begin to indulge in outdoor holiday 
games. 

To speak about breakfast may be trespassing 
upon hospitality, but the Japanese New Year 
breakfast is something unique. The mochi makes 
up the main part. The unstuffed rice-cakes are 
cooked with various articles; potatoes, fish, tur- 
nips and everything palatable from land and sea 
is found with them. A person of ordinary capac- 
ity can scarcely take more than a few bowlf uls of 
the dish, but there are people brave enough to 
dispatch twenty or thirty at a time ! For weeks 
after whenever idlers of the town come together 
there is always a warm discussion concerning their 



BY HIMSELF. 93 

comparative merits in this respect. I have noticed 
that the good people of this republic also look upon 
Thanksgiving and Christmas as the days on which 
to indulge their best appetite-; and I have heard 
persons telling the wonders of their stomachs and 
seeking opinions of the wise men around them, who 
are likewise dreaming over their pipes again of 
the turkeys, chicken-pies and plum-puddings that 
are gone by. 

As the day advances, good towns-people in 
decorous antique garb appear in all directions, 
making New Year calls. Upon meeting their 
acquaintances they have not much to say, the 
chief thing being to keep the head going up and 
down with great formality, — a bow it is intended 
to be, yet a great deal more than that. It is almost 
an impossible act for one not trained so to do, 
unless he goes at it with the spirit of martyrdom. 
Of course, the parlor reception by ladies in white 
is something unheard of in the far East. Ladies 
are to be good and remain in the back parlor, 
except when their presence is desired by the 
gentlemen who do the honor of receiving; you 
often detect the bright eyes directed upon you 
through crannies. 

The dinner is not so splendid an affair as the 
breakfast, but has many customary dishes to be 
served. The fact will strangely strike the reader, 
who associates in his mind such a sumptuous board 
as that of Christmas with the term dinner. In 
that figurative sense in which we frequently use it, 
it must properly be applied to the breakfast. I 
must mention here that in the New Year meals 



94 A JAPANESE BOY. 

we put aside our crockery ware and take out from 
the store-room wooden bowls, japanned red inside 
and jet black outside with our family crest in gold. 
The children's are rendered more attractive with 
the pictures of flying cranes on the covers, and 
tortoises with wide-fringed tails among the waves 
on the exterior of the bowls, all in gold. A -casual 
sight of them at other times, in my rummaging for 
things, was sufficient to awake in me a pleasant 
train of thoughts relative to the holidays. Oh, and 
that tremendous big fish, I must tell you about that ! 
— Every family provides itself for New Year with a 
huge buri— Japanese name of course, I am igno- 
rant of its proper zoological term ; I obtained my 
first idea of the whale from this monstrous fish. It 
hangs in the kitchen from one of the rafters 
throughout the holidays ; the cook cuts meat from 
it, and the family feasts upon it until it is reduced 
to a downright skeleton. My impression is that 
the fish is caught in some of the provinces border- 
ing on the Pacific Ocean (Imabari looks on the 
inland sea) and sent to our town : certain it is, the 
article we procure is always salted. The rush for 
the buri in the market before New Year is just like 
the turkey bargaining before Thanksgiving in this 
country; the difference is that the buri is more 
expensive, and it is not everybody that can afford 
to buy one. 

Taking advantage of the last evening's cere- 
mony, in the course of the day female beggars 
appear in the mask of the Goddess Good Luck, and 
sing and dance for alms. That is tolerable. But a 
Jiost more of strong male beggars, personating the 



BY HIMSELF. 95 

devils with rattling bamboo bars and with hid- 
eously painted faces, plant themselves before the 
houses and demand in a strident authoritative 
voice a propitiation with hard coin. Some of them 
paint themselves with cheap red paint, represent- 
ing the "red devils;" others smear themselves 
with the still more economical scrapings from the 
sides of the chimney, becoming thereby the " black 
devils. " The idea of the devils of different colors 
came from the Buddhist's pictorial representation 
of Hell, wherein the demons are seen serving out 
punishment to the sinners, — throwing them into a 
sulphurous flame, a lake of blood, a huge boiling 
caldron and to dragon-snakes ; giving them a free 
ride on a chariot of fire ; driving them up a moun- 
tain beset with needles ; pulling out the tongues of 
the liars ; mashing the bodies as you do potatoes ; 
and so forth. The pictures, by the bye, with many 
others of saints and martyrs, are the same in na- 
ture as the religious paintings of Rome and equally 
grand and magnificent. The bean ceremony, to 
conclude, although it might have banished imagi- 
nary devils, after all, has drawn together the very 
next morning an army of the flesh-and-blood devils 
that want to eat and drink. 



96 A JAPANESE BOY. 



CHAPTER XI. 

Among the recreations most fondly indulged in 
on the New Year holidays is kite-flying. This is so 
well known here that I have often been over- 
whelmed with questions regarding it by little 
Americans. Our kites are mostly rectangular, 
with heroes or monsters painted on them in most 
glaring colors. A wind instrument looking like a 
bow is sometimes fastened to the kite, and when 
the kite is in the air the wind strikes the string and 
makes a humming noise. At a kite -fight the com- 
batants bring their flying kites in juxtaposition 
and strive to cut the string by friction. Now and 
then an unfortunate, hero or monster, is seen tossed 
about at the disposal of the wind, finding its fate 
upon the water, the tree- tops, or I know not where. 
At the height of kite-flying even those with more 
discretion enter into the full spirit of the young 
and build prodigious kites. I have actually seen 
one so large that, when flown high up on a fair 
windy day, the combined efforts of several men 
could scarcely hold it. It was a hard-fought tug- 
of-war ; after much ado, with the aid of wrestlers 
and athletes, I remember, the monster was at length 
secured to the main front oaken pillar of a great 
building. The string fastened to such a kite is a 



BY HIMSELF. 97 

strong twine hundreds of yards long, yet it often 
gives way. And to fly such a kite on the streets of 
a city is next to an impossibility ; it will bump hard 
at houses and rake down the tiles (our houses are 
roofed with tiles) over the heads of passers-by; 
for which reason, it is always taken out to the 
open country and afterwards brought into town 
when it has gone well up in the air. What a mass 
of curious children surge beside the men who hold 
the kite by the string as they walk home ! 

I have sat many an afternoon after school whit- 
tling the bamboo frame for a modest kite. It was 
my most interesting employment ; my father calls 
me into another room to run on an errand for him ; 
I hear him plainly, but pretend otherwise and make 
him call repeatedly — ungrateful son ! Upon hear- 
ing him approach and perceiving longer delay to 
be impossible, I break away from the agreeable oc- 
cupation and emerge as cheerfully as I can, " Yes, 
sir, father." He inquires what I was about, re- 
proves me for not answering him quickly and gives 
me to know that if I do not heed his behest he will 
surely throw my kite into the fire. After such in- 
terruptions, however, the important frame-work is 
done. Oh, what satisfaction I feel over it ! Then I 
go to the kitchen and wheedle Osan into giving 
me a bit of boiled rice, which I make into paste on 
a piece of board with a bamboo spatula. With the 
paste I put white paper on the frame and leave it 
to dry. There are many little technical points in 
kite construction, but those I refrain from entering 
into in detail. When it is dry, I write on the kite 
confidentially with my own hand some appropriate 
7 



98 A JAPANESE BOY. 

word, say, Zephyr, in lieu of picture. I now tie 
the string and try its flight ; it dashes at the eaves 
this way, pitches into the latticed windows that 
way, twirls in mid-air like a tumbler-pigeon, and 
in general behaves badly. Thereupon I take it 
down, add weight to the lighter side, attach a tail 
and do all to insure balance and equilibrium, and, 
then try it again. 

Since coming to this country, the request has 
been put to me more than once by little friends 
that I should make them a genuine Japanese kite. 
But the want of tenacious paper and bamboo has 
always prevented me from complying with their 
wish. 

As I write on, by the association of ideas I call 
to mind an event which greatly provoked me. I 
was fond of poking into and turning over old 
things up in the garret, as I hinted before, or I had 
archaeological taste, to give it a dignified name. 
One day, much to my surprise, I came upon an old 
kite frame perhaps six feet by five, good for 
further use. I found it hidden behind a worm- 
eaten chest of drawers ; it was constructed, I dis- 
covered, when my uncle was a boy ; everybody in 
the house had forgotten all about it. I was 
instantly possessed with the desire to boast of a big 
kite, now that the frame was ready ; and as if to 
help out my plan, some one recollected that the 
reel of string that went with the kite was put away 
in one of the drawers. This I immediately sought 
and found. These relics I guarded with great care 
until a visit from my uncle, who resided in the 
sa,me town, when I produced them and got him to 



BY HIMSELF. 99 

tell me about his kite. I could not have done a 
better thing ; his old playthings before him put my 
uncle in mind of his boyhood ; they created in him 
the wish to see them restored once more to their 
former usefulness ; and he promised me he would 
attend to them himself. 

Attend to them himself he did in a few days, tak- 
ing as lively an interest as I did. Having papered 
the frame, we carried it to a man who painted 
show-bills. He painted on it a squatting Daruma 
in scarlet canonical robe, holding the high-priest's 
mace, a staff with a long tuft of white hair at one 
end, while the white untouched margin left by this 
large figure was stained blue. It was a glorious 
kite ; the picture of Daruma, who was a great light 
of Buddhism, the founder of a new sect, who sat 
and thought through his whole life, suffering no 
disturbance from matters temporal — hence his 
papier-mdche image on a hemisphere of lead for 
the toy "tumbler;" Daruma, I started to say, 
looked out from our kite with a pair of immense 
goggle eyes, shaded by prominent shaggy eye- 
brows; a furrow ran down on either cheek from 
the side of his nose toward the corners of his 
mouth; large Hindoostanee ear-rings hung from 
the enlarged lobes of his ears ; and I may here add 
that, notwithstanding his reputed sedentary habits, 
he is always drawn as a holy man of strong physi- 
cal features. 

So far, so good. My uncle, as might be antici- 
pated, wanted to see how our kite would fly. 
Accordingly, we got a big boy to hold it up for us 
against the wind, and my uncle at a distance held 



100 A JAPANESE BOY. 

the string ready to dash at a run. The signal was 
given, and away my uncle ran, and up rose the 
kite. Breathlessly I was watching. But it no 
sooner rose than it pitched sidewise and struck on 
the spikes upon the fences of the Mayor's house. I 
lost my heart ! I did not cry just yet ; the catas- 
trophe was too big for utterance and too sudden ; 
there was no time to weigh the calamity. The 
men pulled at the kite, which, I say, had stuck 
fast on the pointed black wooden bars bristling 
unmannerly in all possible directions. I bore the 
spikes an inveterate enmity ever after, till one day 
they were every one of them pulled down with the 
house, at which I felt extreme satisfaction. The 
tearing noise of the kite, however, rent my breast 
then ; and the men, being persuaded at last of the 
futility of their proceeding, brought forward a lad- 
der, and my uncle mounted it deliberately. I 
could not contain myself any longer; I ran into 
the house, threw myself on the floor and wept bit- 
terly. After that I turned over the whole affair in 
my mind at leisure, lying on my back, studying 
the ceiling and sucking my finger in baby fashion. 
The phantom of the broken kite rose before me ; I 
swallowed down my grief with difficulty. Who 
brought it about? Nobody else but uncle; yes, if 
uncle had not wished to try the kite it would not 
have happened. I whimpered afresh at the pain- 
ful thought ; I now reproached my uncle as much 
as I formerly thanked him. After a considerable 
lapse of time my uncle came in, crestfallen, with 
the tattered kite. But in dudgeon I would not 
speak to him or look at him ; he very awkwardly 



BY HIMSELF. 101 

endeavored to console me and with difficulty 
coaxed me to accept his atonement in patching the 
rents. The moisture of the glue, nevertheless, 
scattered the original colors and disfigured the 
beautiful picture. I forget how I forgave him 
that. 

But to resume the holiday games. Boys play a 
sort of ball — the "pass and catch" part — with a 
good-sized dai-dai (lemon) ; we call it dai-dai rolling. 
We give each other the " grounder" repeatedly, so 
that even the hard-rinded Japanese fruit gets rup- 
tured in a little time ; then our business is to beat 
about for a supply of the new balls, which we inva- 
riably accomplish by knocking down the fruit 
from the unguarded arches. The people generally 
take the prank in good part. 

Girls play out-of-doors with battledore and 
shuttlecock; they also play with cotton-balls, 
which they toss with their dainty hands against 
hard floors. They keep the ball bounding rhyth- 
mically between the palm of their hand and the 
floor, and hum songs in time with it. 

At home and in the evening we play cards and 
other games. The favorite game of cards consists 
in giving out the first lines of couplets and en- 
deavoring to pick out from the confusion of cards, 
in competition with others of the company, the 
particular cards on which are written the follow- 
ing lines ; the one with the largest number of cards 
in the end is declared the winner. This game has 
the commendable feature of impressing on the 
mind celebrated poems; it is not merely time 
thrown away. Japanese poems, I remark in pass- 



102 A JAPANESE BOY. 

ing, are short and pithy; the classic "a Hundred 
Poems from a Hundred Poets " are characteristic 
and are consequently printed for the purpose of 
the game. The selected poems of the To dynasty, 
which in the annals [of Chinese literature corre- 
spond to the English Elizabethan period, I mean 
in development and not in chronology, are substi- 
tuted by scholars for the Japanese poems. We 
also play a kind of parchesi and a form of the 
game of authors, but whist, poker, casino, euchre, 
cribbage, etc., we know nothing of. Chess and 
checkers the Japanese are expert in, but they are 
not New Year games. 

Fireside conversation, kind words and hearts 
constitute the quiet enjoyment and sunshine of the 
holidays. All things conspire to produce in us 
serene and tranquil pleasure, but nothing worth 
recording occurs in the remaining days. Some 
business-like briskness is manifested in the early 
hours of the second morning, for tradesmen ob- 
serve the ancient custom of inaugurating the com- 
merce of the opening year and give out presents to 
their customers. 

Later in the spring — I forget the exact date — all 
the straw ornaments, withering wreaths and the 
like used in the decoration are brought together 
and burnt up with religious care on a broad sandy 
river flat just beyond the town. The day ap- 
pointed for the rite is another gala-day of the 
calendar, at least in Imabari. For some time pre- 
vious to the occasion, the straw relics of all the 
houses of a street are carefully collected in one 
spot, and then such as are artists exercise inge- 



BY HIMSELF. 103 

nuity to produce some recognizable shape out of 
the heap that may catch the eye of spectators, on 
its way to the place of combustion. Street vies 
with street in originality in fashioning the straw 
stack and takes care not to divulge what it is con- 
structing until the day of display, then it ostenta- 
tiously raises the finished work, whatever it may 
be, on a high movable platform or pedestal on 
wheels, which takes its position in the line of march 
with those of the other streets. The whole town is 
curious to know what is in the parade and rushes 
out to behold. 

I recall only one among many things which my 
own street produced on such occasions ; it was a 
military cap and a trumpet joined together. In- 
numerable sheets of gilt paper were wasted in 
giving the monstrous form of a trumpet the ap- 
pearance of bright, shining brass; the cap, too, 
was wonderfully like the real imported thing. 
These barbarian outlandish articles, having been 
adopted by the Japanese government at the time, 
were exciting the attention and comments of the 
people; hence, the striking reproduction of them 
on a greatly magnified scale made everybody utter 
a little cry of surprise and admiration. I forget to 
which of us the inspiration came. 

The pedestal or platform has two large massive 
iron rings in front, to which are tied stout ropes ; 
the younger part of the inhabitants of the street 
hang together in two rows and haul the deco- 
rated burden. Song and chorus, and the heavy 
wheels creak onward a short distance, then stop ; 
song again and chorus; then another pause. 



104 A JAPANESE BOY. 

Among the crowd we occasionally meet a man car- 
rying a bamboo stick, one end of which is split and 
holds half-a-dozen hardened mochis. He intends to 
scorch the cakes in the flames of the relics and, 
upon returning home, to divide them among his 
family and eat them for the miraculous power they 
are then believed to possess. 

This is, in short, the manner in which we ob- 
serve and end our great national holiday of New 
Year. Of late, it is to be regretted, many of the 
old customs are omitted by the people who have 
got modern notions into their heads. Innovations 
of the latter days not very desirable or in good 
taste are fast gaining ground. A few years more, 
and, I fear, the neglect of time-honored observances 
will be complete in Japan. 



BY HIMSELF. 105 



CHAPTEE XII. 

We have a great many other holidays ; it is im- 
possible to speak of them all. Simply to name 
some, there are God Fox's day on the second of the 
second month ; the Feast of Dolls, for little girls, on 
the third of the third month ; the Feast of Flags 
for little boys on the fifth of the fifth month ; the 
ablution mass in the sixth month; the Tanabata 
(eve of the seventh) on the seventh of the seventh 
month ; the day of chrysanthemum flowers and the 
festival of Inoko late in the fall, not to mention 
festivals of several local deities. The vital impor- 
tance of these holidays to us children centered in 
the dainties and delicacies with which our mothers 
and sisters served us then and not often at ordi- 
nary times. We enjoy boiled red beans and rice 
on the second of February; rice-flour cakes 
wrapped in the leaves of a species of oak called 
kashiwa on the fifth of May; rice-flour cakes 
daubed with the an on the day of the Buddhistic 
ceremony of ablution; roast and boiled chestnuts 
and rice and chestnuts on the ninth of September ; 
and the sake on almost all occasions, but with a 
spray of peach blossom inserted in the bottle on 
the third of March, and a bunch of chrysanthe- 
mum flowers on the chrysanthemum day. 



106 A. JAPANESE BOY. 

In Tanabata and Inoko the boys of the town 
used to club together on payment of a small fee, 
the biggest among them presiding over their 
affairs by common consent. Our first work is to 
canvass such houses in consecutive order as have 
large front rooms, soliciting their owners to loan 
us the room for a few days for a temporary club- 
house, free of charge. And when we are given by 
a generous man the use of his house, thither we 
convey our common property. The property com- 
prises the scroll gods, a holy mirror, the golden 
gohei (a sacred brass ornament), a pair of pewter 
sake bottles, splendid curtains, a large number of 
the sambo (offering stand of white wood, some- 
times varnished), countless Japanese lanterns, tim- 
ber and board ready to be put together for an altar 
looking like a staircase, Chinese crimson felt car- 
pets, several drums and certain kinds of bells. 
These things have been handed down to us by suc- 
cessive generations of boys, repaired each year 
and additions made by donations or by "chipping 
in," and all nicely packed in chests, on the sides 
and covers of which we read the names of some 
that have died, and of others that are yet living 
though well-nigh to the grave. The boys take 
good care of the old heirlooms, that they may 
transmit them without injury to their successors. 
The older boys take the things out and set up a 
place of worship; on the days of festivity the 
members come to the headquarters with their 
lunch-boxes well stocked. We assemble not to 
worship really, you might as well understand now, 
but to have a good time. Fruits and cakes have 



BY HIMSELF. 10? 

been taken in by the managers from the wholesale 
merchants, and are piled up in pyramids on the 
samboes upon the steps of the altar; they are to 
be divided equally among the stockholders after- 
wards. The lanterns are lighted brilliantly at 
night ; a special lantern is hoisted on a very high 
pole planted before the house to signify our quar- 
ters. 

At Tanabata we march through the streets with 
green bamboo trees, rending the air with certain 
shouts and beating the instruments, and upon 
meeting the boys of other streets have a scuffle. 
The scene is a confusion of bamboos and bits of 
rainbow-colored papers which arc tied plentifully 
to the branches. After a hot contest we come 
home to the club, eat a hearty lunch and celebrate 
the incidents of our victory. The day after the 
festival we take our bamboos to the sea and cast 
them off to be drifted away by the waves and 
finally up to the Heavenly Stream or the Milky 
Way, where the gods may read our wishes written 
on the rainbow -colored papers. On this day every- 
body goes swimming, because the sea-monkey is 
handcuffed that can lengthen one arm enormously 
at the expense of the other, and draws in and 
drowns people, especially boys who go swimming 
in opposition to their mothers' remonstrance. 

At Inoko we bring forth our gorin. A gorin is a 
spherical stone, usually granite, with an iron belt 
loose in a groove around the great circumference ; 
the belt has many small rings through it. A club 
of boys possesses five to ten gorins of various sizes. 
To the rings are attached ropes, and calling at the 



108 A JAPANESE BOY. 

families to which came male offspring during the 
year, the boys utter words of blessing and pound 
the ground by pulling up and down the solid stone. 
After a series of thumps a depression is left behind. 
We hold gorin collisions with neighboring powers. 
A challenge is sent to other clubs to meet us with 
their best gorin on neutral ground at such a time, 
that we may know which is stronger. The war 
gorin is equipped for the contest with a network of 
ropes, exposing a portion of the surface that shall 
deal the blow; the leading boys guide it in the 
battle by several strong ropes. Generally in the 
collision more noise is heard than the clash; how- 
ever, not rarely the contest is kept up until one or 
the other splits through the core, and the opposi- 
tion is so strong as to cause older people to inter- 
fere in the affair, because it infallibly entails 
unpleasant feeling between the parties and a scrim- 
mage at all times. I call to mind that our club 
used to plume itself upon the strength and dura- 
bility of its gorins ; no, not one received so much 
as a crack, albeit many and severe were the tests 
to which they had been subjected. 

Besides the gorin sports, at Inoko we get up 
wrestling matches. On the yard of the club-house 
we build a circular bank of clay and fill the inside 
with sand; in this all the members contend in 
practice. Small as I was, I did not like to be 
thought out of fashion, and to pay for my uncalled- 
for prowess suffered from sores and bruises. In a 
body we visit the headquarters of the other clubs 
and negotiate the matches, which take place imme- 
diately on the spot in full view of both parties. 



BY HIMSELF. 109 

The ceremony of ablution is chiefly observed by 
Shinto priests. (Shinto is the native faith, holding 
up the sun for the center figure of worship and 
eight millions of spirits besides.) The way they 
observe it in my province consists in setting up in 
the temple-yard three large hoops of the sasaki 
tree (sacred to Shintoism) and inviting the people 
to pass through them. The hoops are supposed to 
take up the people's sins and transgressions, leav- 
ing them clean and fit for the further grace of the 
gods. Thus loaded with the earthly corruptions and 
loathsome pollutions of man, the round bands of 
the fresh, green trees, thickly stuck with zigzag 
white paper hangings, at the end of the day are 
taken to running water and washed thoroughly or 
more commonly committed to the sea. 

At about the same time Buddhist priests hold 
mass for dead sinners. The different sects have 
different notions. My family were formerly pa- 
rishioners to a temple of the Hokke sect ; therefore, 
I best remember the mass as observed by that par- 
ticular denomination. The church society and its 
officers meet in the vestry to take action in the 
preparation of floating lanterns. These are hasty, 
rude contrivances which the active of the parish- 
ioners volunteer in getting up ; it does not require 
much skill in carpentry to make them, but it takes 
time to make so many. Look at one : an odd 
piece of board for the bottom, two split bamboos 
bent and stuck on it like the handle of a basket one 
across the other, and a hood of paper glued round 
the whole; a nail in the center holds a penny 



110 A JAPANESE BOY. 

candle. All very inartistic indeed, as befits their 
use, as we shall see presently. 

On the mass day all about the temple are strung 
up an untold number of the lanterns. Now, devout 
old folks and young come in streams all day to put 
up prayers for their beloved dead, and those so in- 
clined buy the lanterns for the purpose of light- 
ing the way for the departed. The goods when 
paid for are handed over by the presiding elders, 
who have charge of the sale, to the priest and 
assistant priests ; they write sutra verses on them 
and order them to be left before the altar. If 
business is good, by the latter part of the even- 
ing the entire stock is disposed of ; the till rattles 
with money, and the priests are in good cheer. 
Then follows a great chanting and beating of 
drums, and after prayers have been said once for 
all, the lanterns are put on board several boats and 
the drums and cymbals also carried to enliven 
the next scene; the priests and committee walk 
down to the shore slowly. Things being placed 
aright, out they pull on the heaving sea— the in- 
coming tide having been looked to beforehand, so 
that at high tide the lighted lanterns may be set 
afloat and go drifting at their will with the falling 
flood. 

Ah, they are gone, the skiffs ! We discern them 
no more. I want you to understand that it is a 
dark night, otherwise my picture isn't so good, al- 
though in point of fact the moon does often chance 
to look up on the occasion. And the moonlight 
on the swelling tide is not very bad, I acknowl- 
edge, yet, you see, I wish to preserve the grand 



BY HIMSELF. m 

effect of "fire and darkness." So, pray, gentle 
reader, indulge my fancy this time ; I won't always 
ask this. Well, it's a dark night then: as the 
boats slip out of our sight we can hear the lapping 
noise that comes of their swaying from side to 
side caused by the queer Japanese mode of sculling. 
Ere long we cease to hear it ; the vessels are well 
out in the obscurity. Do we not see anything of 
them? Not quite. The lights they convey show 
us their whereabouts. We are all this while on 
shore, mind you. The onset of water seems to 
take uncommon delight in driving us up, chuck- 
ling to itself along the beach, until at last we are 
crowded into a narrow strip of sand with the rest 
of the spectators. There ! it's up to the high-water- 
mark ; we won't be annoyed any longer. Let's sit 
down. 

While we watch, ten thousand points of light dot 
the expanse ; no finer illumination, I for one, ever 
expect to see on earth ; and soon there blazes out a 
great ruddy flame from the chief priest's boat, 
amid the confused echoes of prayers on all the 
vessels. That is the end of it, friends ; sit still and 
look on, if you choose, — many indeed do so — and 
observe the lights recede and drift away, or die 
out. Of these some never return and are believed 
to have gone where they were bidden, others and 
a majority, to be frank with you, are washed 
ashore next morning shattered into fragments. 



112 A JAPANESE BOY. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

It is wonderful how the memory brings up, as I 
write, ten thousand irrelevant trivialities, — delight- 
ful to me, nevertheless, — many of which have no 
claim to be placed here, except that they are more 
or less related to the temple. Verily, the faculty of 
memory is a godsent gift, a boon of solitary hours. 

Our temple was the nearest to the sea of the row 
on Temple street, which I referred to in the earlier 
portion of this sketch. The head-priest was an ami- 
able, gentle person, very learned they say, though 
giving no indication of being such. He did his 
duty, to be sure, in sermons, but never cared 
much to distinguish himself in eloquence; he 
would rather read or entertain visitors in the quiet 
of his tastefully upholstered zashiki (guest room), 
sipping the excellent Uji tea and viewing the ar- 
tistic beds of chrysanthemum laid out with great 
formality. He cultivated exquisite flowers; the 
slender stems bent under the large flaunting heads, 
and the priest-gardener took pity and provided 
them with firm props ; he was as attached to them 
as a father to his children. If a storm by night 
passed over them and he discovered them in the 
morning sagged, matted, and drenched with rain, 
his compassion knew no bounds. 



BY HIMSELF. H3 

It must be confessed that at times his fine taste 
shaded into squeamishness ; he could not help be- 
ing captious about his servitor's slipshod manage- 
ment of business, and yet extremely averse was he 
to giving his own opinion utterance, always turn- 
ing aside in silent disgust. He suffered little 
children, however, nay, loved them ; he took quite 
a fancy to me, calling me pet names, gladdening 
me on my visits with goodies and a bunch of chrys- 
anthemum flowers from his garden, and always 
sending me home safely by a boy-priest. This last, 
found vegetating in almost every temple, is a 
young lad of poor parentage sent thither to be taken 
care of out of charity. The specimen I found here 
was a poor boy, hence happy ; he was sure of din- 
ner now and more full of fun than well became his 
cloth. 

Once he frightened me half to death. It hap- 
pened in this way : I accompanied some one of my 
relatives to our family burying ground in the 
temple yard, on the eve of the annual memorial day 
for the dead, when every family sends a delegate 
to the tombs and invites the spirits home. The 
delegate delivers the oral message with profound 
respect and formality, bowing low to the ground 
before the ancestral tombstones as in an august 
presence. Then he turns about and asks the invis- 
ible to get on his back, secures him with both hands 
behind and gravely walks homeward. At home, in 
the yard on a bed of sand taken from the sea-shore 
a fire is built of flax stems, according to religious 
custom. This is called the "reception fire." The 
spirits are next requested to alight carefully at the 

8 



114 A JAPANESE BOY. 

high home altar so as not to bruise their shanks. 
In Japan each house has a sacred closet wherein 
are enshrined images, ancestral tablets, charms and 
amulets, where cake and oranges, flowers and in- 
cense are offered, and before which the family 
commemorate the days of their ancestors' death. 
This elevated place is called the " Buddha's shelf." 
Let me remark here that the Eastern people are re- 
gardful of their dead; they do not slight them 
because they are dead. Eevile as you may and 
wrongly call it "ancestor worship," the spirit that 
prompts the act is entirely praiseworthy. Besides 
the closet, the tops of cabinet, cupboard and simi- 
lar pieces of household furniture are turned into 
the depositories of Shinto relics and paper gods. 
These "gods' shelves" are, too, carefully served 
with such offerings as salt fish, sake, and light in 
the evening. 

But I am wandering from the main narrative; 
my talk too often gallops into minor tracks unbri- 
dled. As I commenced the narration, I was stoop- 
ing before the resting places of my grandfather (of 
whose quiet departure from our hearth, by the bye, 
I haven't told you), of my grandmother and of my 
sister who passed on before I had ever thought of 
appearing. Eegarding the last two relatives of 
mine, having never seen them in life, I was in the 
habit of asking a heap of questions in the tiresome 
inquisitiveness of children. My mother deigned to 
tell me, especially in a reminiscent mood, a great 
deal concerning them, without minding my sisters, 
who took occasion to upbraid me merrily on this, 
my singular ignorance, in face of my other positive 



BY HIMSELF. 115 

assertion that I had witnessed my mother's wed- 
ding. Dear mamma's stories, interesting as they 
are, touching as they do not a little on the pleas- 
ures, fashions and general social regime of Old 
Japan, I feel obliged to omit. For the present, I 
must go on with my own story. 

I was stooping, I say, before the tombs, all 
about being silent and gloomy; my young ani- 
mated imagination dwelling not on my grand- 
father's goodness but on old wives' awful tales of 
graveyards and dark nights, pale apparitions and 
grinning skeletons; and my whole being sur- 
charged with fear, requiring but the shrill wind 
to make my hair stand on end, and ready to 
start at my own shadow, when suddenly there 
came a moan from behind the adjoining slabs, and 
a moment later a ghost shot up with a wild shriek. 
I drew back involuntarily and caught my breath, 
so did my companion. Then the ghost shook its 
gaunt sides and burst out laughing in ghoulish de- 
light. We were taken aback, but soon rallied 
courage sufficiently to peer at the merry spook. 
How provoking ! The young priest stood on one of 
the tombstones, with the broad sleeve of his monk- 
ish habiliment over his face. He came down to us 
quickly, wearing a mischievous smile, passed over 
the whole thing as a huge jest, putting in a slight 
excuse for causing our undue alarm, and politely 
offered his service in carrying the flowers and 
water-pail. His words and manners smoothed 
away our ruffled temper and rendered a scolding 
impossible; a few more hours made it look too 
slight to report to the head-priest. In the main 



116 A JAPANESE BOY. 

the young priest had the best of us; he earned 
what he liked better than a good dinner, — some 
capital fun. 

And in this connection, here comes bounding 
toward me in my remembrance our pet dog Gem. 
I will relate how he came to be so closely associ- 
ated in my thought with the grave ; it is a sad, 
good story. My young brother, who had a boy's 
fondness for animal pets in an eminent degree, 
got him from another boy whose dog had a litter 
of several puppies. When my brother brought 
him home in his arms, Gem was but a mass 
of tender flesh covered over with soft down; 
he had just been weaned ; consequently by night 
he yelped, and cried piteously for his mother, 
under the piazza where my brother shielded 
him from the paternal eye. My father was not 
a great lover of pets: the cat. he could not bear 
for her soft- voiced, velvet-pawed deceitf ulness ; 
the dog for his belligerent, deep-mouthed barks 
at strangers and for fear of his becoming mad 
in summer time ; and the canary bird— poor thing 
— it was too bad that people should deprive it of 
its native freedom. 

We had our doubts, therefore, how Gem and 
papa were to get along. However, we were not 
without a ray of hope that in time they would 
come to be good friends, for papa had once shown 
that he did not altogether lack the love of dumb 
animals. It was when I began to love the little 
white and spotted mice penned in a box with a 
glass front and a wheel within. My father suffered 
them to be kept in the house out of his love for 



BY HIMSELF. 11 7 

me ; gradually his curiosity was awakened to take 
a look occasionally at what his son exhibited such 
absorbing interest in ; next he became a keen ad- 
mirer of my little revelers, — their gambols, their 
assiduous turning of the wheel, their cunning way 
of holding rice grains, and their house-keeping in 
a wad of cotton in the drawer beneath, to which 
they could descend by a hole in the floor of the 
box. After a while I grew negligent about them, 
and then it was my father who fed them and took 
care of them. 

On the whole, he bade fair to come to a better 
understanding with our precious Gem. Neverthe- 
less, Gem — or rather my young brother — had 
trouble with him during his canine minority. 
When the f puppy had grown big, true to our 
prophecy, my father began to show his just appre- 
ciation of him. Gem would sit beside him on his 
hind legs at meal times and watch intently the 
movements of the chopsticks, with his head in- 
clined on one side one moment and on the other 
the next, letting out an occasional faint guttural 
cooing by way of imploring a morsel. Should 
there haply fall from the table an unexpected gift, 
say a sardine's head, Gem with the utmost alacrity 
would pick it up and occupy himself for a few 
minutes, then, licking his chops and wagging his 
tail, he would turn up to my father a gaze at once 
thankful for what was given and hopeful for 
more. Little Gem took a fancy to grandpa, and 
when the children were away at school, he would 
pay him a visit and pitpat into his room uncere- 
moniously, like one of the grandchildren, when the 



118 A JAPANESE BOY. 

old gentleman was dozing over the past at the 
kotatsu (fire-place). This Gem of ours had an idea 
that it was rude to surprise one in his meditation, 
and thought it proper to stop short a few yards 
from grandpa and utter one of his gutturals, as 
much as to say, "How do you do, grandpa?" 
Whereat our good, old grandpa was obliged to 
break off to receive his fourfooted visitor cor- 
dially. 

A time came when grandpa was no more, and a 
perfect stillness settled on our home. Dear little 
Gem could ill comprehend what all the house 
meant and went about as happily and innocently 
as before: he had now his playmates all day at 
home. His conduct caused us to think how glad 
we should be to know no grief, and to such a place 
we felt sure must our grandpa have gone. Early 
every morning for the first week or two somebody 
from the house repaired to the church-yard to see 
that things were right and to put up prayers; 
once or twice Gem was taken along for company, 
and since then he counted it his duty to attend us 
to the temple. My father and I would get up 
some morning on this errand, and no sooner had 
we appeared at the gate than Gem uncurled from 
his comfortable sleeping posture, rose and shook 
his hair and looked his " I am ready." He gener- 
ally paced before us, but frequently tarried behind 
to salute his dog-neighbor with a good morning. 
Sometimes he would course sportively away from 
our sight ; we whistled loud without any response ; 
but knowing he could find his way back, we gave 
up the search and hastened to the temple. Upon 



BY HIMSELF. 119 

our arrival, before grandpa's stone sat a little dog 
looking out on the alert. Gem received us in the 
capacity of host and conducted us to the grave, 
saying as plainly as ever dog said, ' ' Don't you 
see? I know the way." 

One morning we rose to find our Gem gone. 
Inquiries revealed him lying at a short distance 
from the gate, with his fur dyed in his own life- 
blood. He was dead ! Whether a prowling, fero- 
cious animal had fallen on him in the night, or a 
cruel human brute had inflicted the wounds with- 
out just cause, we could not ascertain. My young 
brother took Gem's cruel death to heart; my 
father, too, felt deeply the sad fate of the now-to- 
him priceless pet. And here naturally ends the 
story of our dog. 

In our temple, as well as in those of all other de* 
nominations, the birthday of the great common 
teacher Shaka (Gautama) is observed. It falls on 
the eighth, I think, of April ; the observance is sim- 
ple and quiet except for the distribution of ubuyu. 
In the East, when a child is born the midwife im- 
mediately plunges it in a tub of warm water. This 
water is called ubuyu or first bath. On the eighth 
of April, in every temple a bronze basin is placed 
before the altar ; in the center of the basin stands 
a bronze image of the Infant Shaka ; his attitude 
is much like that of the Boy Christ pictured in the 
illustrated Bibles and the Sunday-school cards as 
teaching a group of the scribes. The myth relates 
a marvelous account of his rising upright in the 
bath-tub and telling his astonished parents and old 
midwife whence he came, pointing to heaven, and 



120 A JAPANESE BOY. 

what his mission on earth was. His exact Worde! 
are recorded in the Buddhist's scriptures. 

The bronze vessel is filled with a decoction of a 
certain dried herb whose taste resembles liquorice. 
The drink is popularly known as the "sweet tea." 
The worshiper pours the liquid over the idol with 
a small dipper and then sips a little of the same, 
numbling some devotional words. 

The excitement of the day consists in the chil- 
dren's running to the temples, during the early 
part of the morning, with bottles for the sweet tea 
or the ubuyu, as it is called in this instance. In 
the temple kitchen the cook has boiled gallons and 
gallons of it, and from the dawn that functionary 
is prepared for the hubbub and the hard task of 
dispensing it expeditiously to the throng. As the 
holiday comes in the same season of the year as 
Easter, the floral decoration of the temples are 
beautiful; the bronze roof above the basin and 
image is always artistically covered over with a 
quantity of a native flower named genge, which the 
botanist may classify under the genus Trifolium, 
if I may trust my early observation. The flowers 
literally color the fields pink in the spring. 



BY HIMSELF. 121 



CHAPTER XTV. 

In describing a distant view of Imabari I made 
mention of a sea-god's shrine jutting out into the 
sea: the festival of that god as well as of one situ- 
ated on the harbor and of another on the bank of 
a river takes place in the summer. The people go 
worshiping in the evening. A myriad of lights 
twinkle in the air and are reflected on the water 
below; refreshment stands line the approaches to 
the shrine, and their vociferous proprietors assert 
their articles to be the very best ; the crackers go 
off like pop-corn and scintillating fireworks dart 
upward now here, now there and everywhere, 
ending in resplendent showers of sparks; drums 
are beating incessantly; the people jostle each 
other in getting on and off the steps of the shrine ; 
along the beach are seated a multitude cooling in 
the breeze, the children amusing themselves by 
digging pits in the sand and making ducks and 
drakes upon the water. These are the salient 
features of the midsummer nights' festivities. The 
last but not the least attraction is the reviving 
breeze along the shore ; the worshipers generally go 
through the offering of pennies, clapping of hands, 
bowing and murmuring of prescribed, short pray- 
ers as hastily as practicable, that they may have 
more time on the beach. 



122 A JAPANESE BOY. 

On the fifteenth of August a great festival takes 
place every year in my native town. It is in 
honor of a patron deity. Everybody is up with 
the dawn, children especially are up ever so early 
in the morning. Paper lanterns hoisted high in 
the air on long bamboo sticks are moving toward 
the shrine. It is yet dark, but the people forget 
sleepiness in the bracing air of the daybreak and 
in the expected joy. Every store is cleared of its 
merchandise and has a temporary home-shrine 
erected, the god being a scroll with the deity's 
name written on it. Two earthen bottles of sake 
are invariably offered. 

When the day is fully come, the procession 
starts from the permanent abode of the gods. A 
huge drum comes foremost, then a number of men 
in red masks with peaked noses, representing 
fabulous servants of the gods. Then come two 
portable shrines built like a sedan chair, and the 
rear is brought up by yagura-daiko. This last is a 
large frame-work of varnished wood carried by 
men. On the top of it a large bass-drum is placed, 
and with four boys around it. The boys are 
dressed in fancy costumes and beat time for the 
songs of the men below. The men are all dressed 
in white and seem at first to keep the presence of 
their gods in mind; but soon they get drunk, 
being treated with wine in every house, and spat- 
ter their garments with mud. 

As the shrines pass, the men get into the houses, 
seize the earthen bottles of sake and pour the con- 
tents over them. These men also get tipsy and 
treat the beautiful shrines rudely, turning them 



BY HIMSELF. 123 

wildly and throwing them hard on the ground ; so 
that, at the end of the day, there is nothing left of 
them but their trunks. This rude usage became 
an established custom, and the portable shrines 
are built very strong. 

A few days previous to the festival, boys prepare 
for it by constructing jumonji. Two slender 
elastic timbers are tied together in the form of a 
cross; one boy mounts it, and his comrades lift 
him up by applying their shoulders to the four 
ends. They march up and down the streets, sing- 
ing festal songs, and challenge boys of other streets 
to come forth and have a " rush." 

Not far from my native town there stands a 
high peak called Stone-hammer. It is customary 
for older boys to scale the lofty mountain and pay 
tribute to the deity on the top of it. They get 
somebody who has been there before for their 
leader. The preparation for the holy hazardous 
journey is rigorous. They bathe in cold water for 
months previously, live on plain diet, and pass the 
time in prayers and penances. Were their hearts 
and bodies unclean, it is reported that, on their 
ascent to the shrine, the gods' messengers — crea- 
tures half man, half eagle — would grasp them by 
the hair and fly away among the clouds and often 
kill them by letting them fall upon the crags and 
down into the valleys. 

When a set of the hardy youths start out for the 
venturesome pilgrimage, they are dressed in white 
cotton clothes, shod with straw sandals, and have 
their long hair thoroughly washed and hanging 
loose. Each carries a pole with a tablet nailed on 



124 A JAPANESE BOY. 

one end, on which is written the name of the 
mountain god. They shout a short prayer in 
unison, blowing a horn at intervals. My elder 
brother who went with one of these bands told me 
that the journey is very toilsome and dangerous. 
There are three chains to help in climbing three 
perpendicular heights. At times he was above the 
clouds, heard the peals of thunder beneath his feet 
and felt extremely cold. The leader sometimes 
holds a wayward youth on the verge of a precipice 
by way of discipline and demands whether he will 
reform or whether his body shall be cast into the 
gorge below. 

The pilgrims bring home for souvenirs the leaves 
and branches of sacred trees and distribute them 
among their friends and relatives. The friends 
and relatives, for their part, wait for them at the 
outskirts of the town. At an appointed hour the 
spreads are awaiting the weary worshipers. Lit- 
tle brothers and sisters strain their ears to catch 
the faintest echoes of the horns and shouts. When 
the youthful travelers are back and fully estab- 
lished again in their homes, marvelous are the 
stories that they deal out to their friends. 

I have been consuming a good deal of time and 
space in describing amusements and holidays ; it is 
high time to revert to studies. I had been going to 
school all this time. The spirit of rivalry at school 
was fostered to such an extent that we felt obliged 
to go to the teachers in the evenings for private 
instruction. The teacher sits with a small, low 
table before and an andon beside him. The andon 
is the native lamp, cylindrical in shape, perhaps 



BY LLIMSELF. 125 

five feet in height and a foot in diameter; the 
frame is made of light wood, and rice-paper is 
pasted round it. In the inside is suspended a brass 
saucer, sometimes swinging from a cross-piece at 
the top and sometimes resting on a cross-bar in the 
middle ; the vessel holds the rush- wick and veget- 
able oil extracted from the seed of a Crucifer. 
The andon gives but feeble light and is now entirely 
displaced by the kerosene lamp. In lighting a 
lamp, prior to the importation of matches, we 
struck sparks with flint and steel on a material 
inflammable as gun cotton, called nikusa, and from 
it secured light with sulphur-tipped shavings called 
tsukegi (lighting-chips). 

Close to the andon the pupils, one at a time, in 
the order of their arrival, bring their books and sit 
vis-a-vis with the teacher. The latter first hears 
the pupil read the last lesson and then, after it has 
been thoroughly reviewed, reads for him the next 
lesson. He does it looking at the pupil's book from 
the top ; the learner follows him aloud, pointing out 
every word he reads with a stick. This is 
repeated until the scholar has nearly learned the 
text. The scholar then returns home to go over 
the lesson by himself. In this manner I have torn 
my Japanese and Chinese authors, just as an 
American boy blots his Caesar and Virgil ; and cer- 
tain passages come up even now as spontaneously 
as the translation of ' ' Gallia est omnis divisa in 
partes tres" 

In school an examination was held at the end of 
each month ; how hard we used to work for it ! It 
decided one's standing in class, and all through the 



126 A JAPANESE BOY. 

following month he had to remain in a given seat. 
Everybody wished to be at the head and that bred 
strong emulation. The night before the examina- 
tion I would study and read aloud all the evening ; 
as it became late my eyelids tended to droop and 
my voice to falter ; my father would bid me not to 
be over-anxious and retire. The next morning he 
would wake me early in compliance with my 
request, and light me a lamp to study by. It was 
a bad habit, I grant ; but if I work half as conscien- 
tiously now as I did then I shall be the wiser for it. 
My class was composed of about six members; 
we met in each other's houses outside of school 
hours to go over our reviews together. One of the 
boys was a carpenter's son and possessed with a 
mechanical craze. Whenever we gathered in his 
house he would offer, unsolicited, to explain and 
exhibit a gimcrack he had made with his father's 
tools, and we did scarcely any studying. Another 
of our schoolmates was a farmer's son, a big shame- 
faced lad sent to our beloved master's to be edu- 
cated in the city ; he boarded with him. Country- 
fellow as we called him, he acquired his preceptor's 
hand in writing so well that nobody in school 
chose to pick a quarrel with him on the question of 
brush handling. But no mortal man is without a 
peccadillo — our boy was always observed to be 
moving his jaws and chewing more candies than 
were good for him. The third was a staid drug- 
gist's son, sedate as his father and as particular in 
trifling matters; he was "awfully smart," as the 
phrase is, in his studies, having pursued them con- 
scientiously ; and besides, he belonged as a matter 



BY HIMSELF. 127 

of course to the category of " good boys." I used 
to sleep with him in his house sometimes and study 
arithmetic with him. 

Here parenthetically I must describe the Japan- 
ese bed. It is a very simple affair : a thick quilt 
is taken out of a closet and spread directly on the 
floor; you lie down on it and pull another quilt 
over yourself, and you have the bed. There is no 
bedstead; therefore, fleas have a picnic at your 
expense if the room is not well swept. In the 
morning you fold the quilts and put them back in 
the closet, and space is given for the day. Our 
pillow is no comfort to a weary head, it being sim- 
ply a hard block of wood ; often it is a box with 
a drawer at the end. The use of this kind of pil- 
low or support was formerly imperative for the 
men and is still to the women for the protection of 
the head-dress from ruin and the bedclothes from 
the bandoline. The sterner sex of our population 
now-a-days crop their hair after the fashion of their 
European brothers, and have in great part given 
up the wooden block for a soft pillow. 

My schooling was continued for some time with 
satisfactory results, and I advanced grade after 
grade well-nigh to the end of the common school 
instruction, when my father saw fit to remove me 
and put me in a store so that I could be a credit to 
myself as a business-man's son. I was an appren- 
tice in two trades at different times and yet unset- 
tled in mind and anxious to go back to school. 
I might go on telling all about the period of my 
apprenticeship, and things I learned and people I 
observed during that time ; how I finally carried 



128 A JAPANESE BOY. 

the day and returned to my studies ; how I studied 
Chinese and how I struck out in English; how 
I went to Kioto and struggled through five years' 
academic training; and how a few years ago I 
borrowed money and sailed for America. But 
that would be writing a real autobiography, which 
would be disagreeable to me as well as distasteful 
to the reader. In the story told so far I ought to 
have, perhaps, prudently suppressed everything 
personal and brought forward only those experi- 
ences that the generality of Japanese boys are 
destined to undergo. Neither have I exhausted by 
any means the incidents of my own childhood ; at 
this moment I am conscious of things of more 
importance than those set down on the foregoing 
pages welling up in the fountain of memory. But 
I have written enough to try the patience of my 
indulgent reader, and I myself have grown weary 
of my own performance ; it is therefore excusable, 
I hope, to draw this narrative abruptly to an 

END. 



